Important to Creditors

Feilding Star, Volume XV, Issue 20, 24 July 1893, Page 2

Important to Creditors

Tub Wellington Post of Friday last says : — We recently drew attention to the increasing favour shown for the process of enameling by means of a deed of assignment, over tho vulgar method of -whitewashing us a deans

of getting Tid 6$ liabilities. It has been pointed out to us that we were in error in attributing the growth of the practice to the operation of the new Bankruptcy Act, although the number of assignments in proportion to bankruptcies has certainly increased lately. The new Act, however, does not offer any increased facilities such as we supposed for arrangements of tlio kind. In fact, all it does in to assignments to trustees for the benefit of creditors is to make such a proceeding an act of bankruptcy, on which proceedings for adjudication in the ordinary manner mny be founded. Nor does the new Act give power to the majority of creditors to coerce or bind the minority. No deed of assignment can operate as a protection to the person n;aking it, or to the trustee under it, as against any creditor who does not accept and sign the deed. Any creditor who does not concur in the arrangement may, indeed, rely upon thfi fact of its having been made with other creditors to force the estate into Court. This fact is certainly not generally known, and it is believed that large creditors frequently ignore or bounce smaller creditors by acting on a deed of assignment without the concurrence of all concerned. It is just as well that it should be known that such deeds ore worthless unless accepted by all concerned.