nom v. M'¤mJr>mB. 47
Legh R. Page, James Lyonegand H. M. Smith, for plaintiff.
Coke at Pickrell, for defendants.
Huenns, J. The charge is that the deed is fraudulent, because it
reserves on its face $4,000 as a hrst charge for the benent of the
grantors. While it is settled law that a debtor in failing circum-
stances may, by bona yide deed, assign his estate in trust for the ben-
ent of creditors, preferring one creditor or class of creditors to another,
yet it is equally well-settled law that, in general, an insolvent debtor
cannot, in an assignment, make a reservation, at the expense of his
creditors, of any part of his property for his own benefit. If he does,
the deed is void for fraud. This deed manifestly contains such a
reservation, and is as manifestly void, unless there be something in
the contention of defendants that the reservation is of a homestead
exemption, and that this is allowed by law, and therefore does not
invalidate the deed. The proposition would be sound if the grantors
in the deed were not partners of a firm, if all the property conveyed
in the deed were not social assets, and if the reservation made in the
deed was not expressly and entirely made out of the social property.
These being all undisputed facts, the question of the validity of the
deed resolves itself into this: Whether or not the partners in an in-
solvent nrm, doing business and having social effects in Virginia,
can, under the laws of Virginia, reserve homestead exemptions to
themselves out of partnership property, as partnership property, to
the detriment of creditors. The general question has been discussed
at bar whether or not partners may have homestead exemptions out
of social effects. But I do not comprehend how the question can
arise at all as a general proposition. The homestead exemption is a
creation of statute law. It had no existence at common law or inthe I
general law of any of the states. It is a creation of statute law, and
there are probably as many laws granting homestead exemptions as
there are states in the union, each being more or less peculiar in its es-
sential features, in the amount and character of the homestead granted,
in the manner of securing and holding it, and in other respects.
Therefore, in adjudicating rights of homestead exemption, we cannot
safely look beyond the statutes of the particular state in which the par-
ticular exemption under consideration is claimed, or safely rely upon
the decisions of the courts of other states in their construction of other
homestead laws. I do not think we have in the case at bar much to
do with the decisions of the courts of other states on the question
whether a partner in an insolvent firm may take to himself a home-
stead exemption out of his firm’s property. The current of author-
ity in the courts of other states, and in the courts of the United
States, is strongly against such a right. But, I repeat, we have lit-
tle to do with those precedents._ We have to do with the homestead
law of Virginia, and with that alone; and I shall confine my view to
that law exclusively. T
The question for us is whether or not the law of Virginia gives a ’