Shim v. Buechel: Florida Courts Can Compel Turnover of Foreign Assets

A Florida court can order a judgment debtor to turn over assets located anywhere in the world, including in foreign countries. The Florida Supreme Court established this rule unanimously in Shim v. Buechel, No. SC21-249 (Fla. May 26, 2022), holding that Florida Statutes § 56.29(6) authorizes trial courts to order debtors to act on assets located outside Florida.

The decision resolved an eight-year conflict between Florida’s district courts. It formally overruled Sargeant v. Al-Saleh, 137 So. 3d 432 (Fla. 4th DCA 2014), which had held that Florida courts could not compel turnover of property in foreign jurisdictions.

Facts of Shim v. Buechel

The underlying dispute involved a licensing agreement between Young Bock Shim and creditors Frederick Buechel and Cynthia Pappas. The parties were also connected through the sale of a medical device company called Endotec, Inc. Buechel and Pappas prevailed at trial, and the court entered judgments exceeding $9 million.

During proceedings supplementary, the creditors discovered that Shim had sold his stock in Cellumed Co., Ltd. and was holding roughly $4 million at his home in South Korea. The funds were in the form of a negotiable instrument drawn on a Korean bank.

The creditors filed a motion to compel Shim to turn over the $4 million. They argued that the trial court could issue the order under § 56.29(6) because it had in personam jurisdiction over Shim. The trial court denied the motion, reasoning that Florida courts lack in rem or quasi in rem jurisdiction over foreign property.

How the DCA Conflict Developed

The Fifth District Court of Appeal reversed the trial court in Buechel v. Shim, 46 Fla. L. Weekly D265 (Fla. 5th DCA 2021). It held that § 56.29(6) plainly authorizes a trial court to order a debtor to act on assets located outside Florida’s territorial jurisdiction, as long as the court has personal jurisdiction over the debtor.

The Fifth District certified direct conflict with the Fourth District’s 2014 decision in Sargeant v. Al-Saleh. In Sargeant, a creditor holding a $28 million judgment sought stock certificates located in the Bahamas, the Netherlands, Jordan, the Isle of Man, and the Dominican Republic. The Fourth District held that the trial court lacked authority to compel turnover because Florida courts have no jurisdiction over foreign property. The Sargeant court based its analysis on policy concerns rather than the statutory text, warning that turnover orders for foreign assets would undermine the domestication of foreign judgment statutes.

The Fifth District rejected that reasoning directly. It stated that policy considerations about § 56.29 belong to the legislature, not the courts. The Florida Supreme Court accepted the certified conflict.

The Florida Supreme Court’s Holding

The Florida Supreme Court approved the Fifth District’s holding and disapproved Sargeant. The opinion was unanimous. Justice Labarga authored the decision, with Chief Justice Canady and Justices Polston, Lawson, Muñiz, Couriel, and Grosshans concurring.

The Court’s reasoning was grounded in the statutory text. Section 56.29(6) authorizes a court to order “any property” held or controlled by anyone subject to the court’s jurisdiction to satisfy a judgment. The Court found this language unambiguous. The word “any” contains no geographic limitation, and the statute draws no distinction between domestic and foreign assets.

The Court also rejected Shim’s argument that the trial court was applying Florida law extraterritorially. The order does not act on the property itself—it acts on the debtor. A court with in personam jurisdiction over a debtor can order that debtor to do anything within the debtor’s power, including transferring assets located abroad. If the debtor refuses, the court enforces compliance through contempt, which is a sanction against the person.

Why the In Personam Distinction Matters

The distinction between in personam and in rem jurisdiction is what makes the Shim holding work. A Florida court cannot directly seize a bank account in South Korea or cancel a stock certificate in the Bahamas. It has no authority over foreign property as property.

What it can do is order the debtor to act. If the debtor holds a $4 million check in a safe, the court orders the debtor to deliver it. If the debtor owns stock in a foreign entity, the court orders the debtor to endorse and transfer it. The order targets the person, not the asset.

Enforcement comes through contempt. A debtor who refuses to comply with a turnover order faces sanctions, including incarceration, until compliance occurs. The Shim Court cited U.S. Supreme Court precedent confirming that courts have exercised this power for over a century. A court may decree conveyance of land in a foreign country and enforce the decree through process against the defendant.

The Case Sequence: Sargeant Through Shim

The Shim decision is the final step in a sequence of four Florida cases that define the reach of judgment collection against assets held outside Florida.

In Sargeant v. Al-Saleh (Fla. 4th DCA 2014), the court held that Florida courts cannot order turnover of stock certificates in a foreign corporation. The opinion treated this as a jurisdictional limitation: courts lack in rem jurisdiction over foreign property and therefore cannot order its delivery.

In Wells Fargo Bank v. Barber (M.D. Fla. 2015), Barber, whom Alper Law represented, had transferred assets to a single-member Nevis LLC. The court distinguished Sargeant by holding that an LLC membership interest is intangible personal property following the owner. Florida law, not Nevis law, governed the creditor’s remedies. The court ordered foreclosure under § 608.433(6).

After Barber, practitioners developed a workaround: issue physical membership certificates and store them offshore, converting the interest into tangible property located outside Florida’s reach. In Schanck v. Gayhart (Fla. 1st DCA 2018), where Alper Law served as co-counsel, the court closed that loophole. It ordered cancellation and reissuance of certificates a debtor had moved to Canada, holding that § 678.1121(5) authorizes any remedy in law or equity to aid a creditor.

The Shim decision completed the sequence. The Florida Supreme Court eliminated Sargeant entirely, holding that § 56.29(6) gives trial courts broad authority to reach any asset the debtor controls through in personam jurisdiction. No geographic limitation exists. No distinction between tangible and intangible property matters. If the debtor can act on the asset, the court can order the debtor to do so.

Why Offshore Trusts Survive Shim

The Shim holding depends on one condition: the debtor must have the power to comply. A court can order a debtor to transfer a check, endorse a stock certificate, or deliver funds from a foreign bank account because all of those actions are within the debtor’s control. Contempt works as an enforcement tool only when the debtor has the ability to perform the ordered act.

An offshore trust with an independent foreign trustee removes that ability. The settlor transfers legal ownership to the trustee. The trustee, not the settlor, holds title to the trust’s assets. The trustee is located in a jurisdiction such as the Cook Islands that does not recognize U.S. court orders and does not enforce foreign judgments.

A Florida court can order the settlor to repatriate trust assets. But if the trustee genuinely refuses the settlor’s request, the settlor cannot comply. The settlor lacks the legal power to force the trustee to act. In that situation, the settlor may raise an impossibility defense: compliance with the court order is impossible because a third party outside the court’s jurisdiction controls the assets.

The dividing line Shim confirms is between assets the debtor controls and assets an independent trustee controls. Everything on the debtor’s side of that line is reachable. Everything on the trustee’s side is not—as long as the trust was properly structured, the trustee is genuinely independent, and the settlor does not retain the power to revoke or direct distributions.

What Shim Means for Asset Protection Planning

The Shim v. Buechel decision eliminated the last argument that moving assets to a foreign country, by itself, protects them from a Florida court. Shim personally held a $4 million check in his home in South Korea and remained subject to Florida jurisdiction. Nothing about the foreign location of the money mattered because Shim controlled it.

The practical lesson is that location alone is not protection. A bank account in the Cayman Islands, stock in a foreign corporation, or cash in a safe overseas—all of these are reachable if the debtor personally controls them and the Florida court has personal jurisdiction over the debtor.

What changes the analysis is transferring control to an independent third party outside the court’s jurisdiction. An irrevocable offshore trust accomplishes this by separating legal ownership from the settlor and placing it with a foreign trustee. The court’s in personam power over the settlor does not extend to the trustee, and the trustee’s jurisdiction does not recognize the court’s orders.