THE ASSETS.
As it is of very little use for a man to find himself legatee of an estate, out of which there is nothing to pay his bequest, so also is it an equal evil if notwithstanding the existence of property to constitute an estate the assets, or the produce of that property be either uncollected or wasted, so that the legatees derive no benefit from them. One of the first things, therefore to be considered, is, whether there be any assets; and next, whether the executor has collected them for distribution. From the various nature of property arising out of the complex state of society, and the different periods and the different circumstances at which, and out of which that state of society and its customs arose, the legislators of the country in their care to secure the safe possession and the right appropriation of property, have endowed it with peculiar privileges, and made it subject to certain contingences according to its kind. Hence it is that the heir-at-law takes the whole of a property in fee tail, or entailed freehold, as it is called in popular language, to the exclusion of every one else; hence it is on the other hand, that by the custom of gavel kind which prevails in the county of Kent, all the children of a proprietor are considered as heirs-at-law and inherit in equal proportions; hence it is that copyholds are subject to different rules to freeholds; and hence it is, also, that the several portions of a man’s property, after his death, are often liable to different contingencies, and have obtained the different denominations of assets. These have been usually distinguished by the several terms of real, personal legal, and equitable, assets. They may be more broadly divided into assets, derived from real property, and those arising from personalty; the real and equitable being chiefly dependant on the former, and the legal, and personal from the latter of these two species of property.