Reply To: Saving shul seats, sidurrim for others not yet here

Reb G. – in my youth I attended a shul with seats as CTL described, and rights to the seat were decided by the shuls Board of Directors to be that the seat with your name is yours and you have the right to ask someone to please move to another empty seat. So simply put, it depends what the board of directors decided when they sold the seats. In the shul where I presently daven, a person purchases his seat for the year and that seat is reserved shabbos or Yom Tov morning until yishtabach (again decided by the board).