Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 1).pdf/227

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RED RIVER NATIONAL BANK v. FREEMAN.
203

say: “The assignment passes for the benefit of creditors the same interest precisely which an officer would seize by virtue of execution, and there is no more difficulty in making the selection of exempt property in the one case than in the other.” In Indiana, the statute regulating assignments required the assignor to turn over all of his property to the assignee, and the latter was required to have it all valued by appraisers, and, after the apprasal, the assignee was required to redeliver to the debtor as exempt property an amount not exceeding $300 in value. In, a case under such statute, the debtor did not by his assignment turn over or assign all of his property, but held back certain effects, claiming them as exempt, and the court say: ‘A reservation in good faith, in an assignment by the assignor of so much property as may be exempt from execution,’ will not avoid the deed.” Garnor v. Frederick, 18 Ind. 507.

We quote with approval the language of an early Michigan case, Hollister v. Loud, 2 Mich. 310: “Another ground of objection is that the assignors reserved from the general mass of the property such of it as was by law exempt from levy and sale on execution. This question has been raised under the statute of 13 Eliz. It is the settled law in England that, to make a voluntary conveyance void as to creditors, it must embrace property subject to be taken on execution for the payment of debts. It is held there (as it must be here) that the statute was not intended to enlarge the remedies of creditors. That would be a strange anomaly (says Judge Story in 1 Eq. Jur. § 367) to declare that to be a fraud upon creditors which in no respect varied their rights or remedies. We cannot perceive why this same doctrine should not apply as conclusively to a conveyance which withholds property from creditors which is not subject to execution, and which is expressly and in all contingencies saved to the debtor by statute law. As to the property which was for the time being withheld, and which was allowed to the assignors by the assignees, as being exempt by law, we say, if the property was not exempt, it, at the least, was assigned, and vested in the trustees. The assignees must settle that question with the assignors. The creditors will hold them responsible, if the property was not exempt. It was not done secretly; the parties