SG Heritage Dictionary

Asset [Noun] Webster's Dictionary 1913

Any article or separable part of one's assets.

Assets [Noun] Webster's Dictionary 1828

1. plural [Latin sat, satis, enough.]

2. Goods or estate of a deceased person, sufficient to pay the debts of the deceased. But the word sufficient, though expressing the original signification of assets is not with us necessary to the definition. In present usage, assets are the money, goods or estate of a deceased person, subject by law to the payment of his debts and legacies. assets are real or personal; real assets are lands which descend to the heir, subject to the fulfillment of the obligations of the ancestor; personal assets are the money or goods of the deceased, or debts due to him, which come into the hands of the executor or administrator, or which he is bound to collect and convert into money.

Assets [Noun plural] Webster's Dictionary 1913

1. Property of a deceased person, subject by law to the payment of his debts and legacies; -- called assets because sufficient to render the executor or administrator liable to the creditors and legatees, so far as such goods or estate may extend.

2. Effects of an insolvent debtor or bankrupt, applicable to the payment of debts.

3. The entire property of all sorts, belonging to a person, a corporation, or an estate; as, the assets of a merchant or a trading association; -- opposed to liabilities.

Assets Encyclopedia Britannica

ASSETS, a technical English law word, derived through the old Norman phraseology from the same source as the French assez, enough, and signifying the property of a debtor available for the satisfaction of his creditors. Thus the property of a bankrupt is termed his assets, and is the fund out of which his liabilities must be paid. When a person dies, the goods which come to executors or administrators are called assets personal; the lands descending to the heir, are assets real. The former are the primary and natural fund out of which the debts of the testator or intestate of every description must be paid. The latter, by 3 and 4 Will. IV. c. 104, are also available, after the personal estate is exhausted, and preference is given to creditors by specialty over creditors by simple contract When one of two claimants may go to either fund, and the other is restricted to one fund only, if the first claimant has recourse to the fund open to both, equity will permit the other claimant to stand in the place of the first against the other fund. This is called marshalling the assets. If, for example, before the statute 3 and 4 Will. IV. c. 104, a special creditor, who might claim against either the real or the personal assets, satisfied his debt out of the latter, a creditor by simple contract, having the latter only to claim against, would be permitted to stand in place of the specialty creditor against the real estate.

9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 2, p. 729
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