Alienation of property might be complete or partial. Of complete alienation we may instance donation, sale, exchange, dedication, testament. The latter was rarely complete in Babylonia. Examples of partial alienation are loan, lease, pledge, deposit.
Importance of the fact of ownership
We may note as a common mark of all these transactions the care taken to fix and define ownership. The transfer is “from” A to B. In early times the property is usually first stated to belong to A. Then he is often said in Assyrian times to be the bêlu of it, its full and legitimate owner. The new owner had to be satisfied that A was competent to part with it. This is often made clearer by saying, in later times, that no one else has any claim upon it. Hence arise guarantees against defeasor, redemptor, et cetera. This subject of guarantees is most interesting, though often obscure. The investigation of the varied rights which were likely to interfere with freedom of transfer is most important.
Peculiar forms of assignments
In certain cases we shall find a sort of hypothecation of property, as when it is assigned as security, but not given up. The possession is not free, but it is not alienated. We have also a donatio retento usufructu, which only gives a reversion of the property. Here also certain rights may be reserved against the ultimate possessor.
Another interesting point is that property may be credited to a man, and set off against other liabilities, so that he [pg 219] may never actually be in possession, but only nominally passing it on to others, and even, eventually, it may come back to the first owner, who may never part with it at all.
Restrictions on free gifts
Undoubtedly men were at liberty in daily life to make presents one to another. But the rights of the family were so strong that for the most part all the property of the parents was jealously regarded as tied to the children, or other legal heirs. When a man died, his property was divided according to a rigid law of inheritance. When a woman left her father's house to be married, the father gave her the share of his goods which fell to her, without waiting until his death to divide his substance. In this case she had nothing further at his death. But the property was not her husband's, though he and she shared its use; it was entailed to her children. If she had none, it went back to her father's house: to her brothers, if she had any, or to her father's other heirs. Unless a man legally adopted his natural sons, they did not inherit. Hence neither man nor woman was wholly free to give. But, hedged about with consents and reservations, donations took place.
The conditions of any gift
We have a great variety of types of donation, not always easy to classify, and often obscure, in some details. The common characteristics are that deeds of gift were duly executed, sealed, and witnessed; and that the consents of the parties, whose expectations were thus diminished, or restricted, had to be obtained.