Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 9.djvu/46

 IS RE m'kENNA. 31 �veSts the estate, but only consummates or makes perfect that -which had been before originated and vested. I shall not here critically exam- ine the authorities consulted on thei general, eharacter of this estate with a view of determining the exact scope of our statute, because, whatever may be that eharacter, it is too well settled that it may be conveyed by the husband, may be sold maaev Jieri facias, and passes to an assignee in bankruptcy, to require more than a citation of some of the cases on that point. Gardner v. Hpoper, 3 Gray^ 398; Vreeland v. Vrecland, 1 Green, N. J. Eq. 513; Boykin x. Bain, 28 Ala. 332; Day y. Cochran,' 2i Miss. 261; Schermerh&rn v. Miller, 2 Cow. 439; Gihhins v.Eyden, L. E. 7 Eq. 371; Morgan v. Morgan, 5 Madd. 408; Follett v. Tyrer, 14 Sim. 125; Cooper v. Macdonald, L. E. T Ch. Div. 288; 1 Bish. Mar. Wom. § 489 ; Hill. Bankruptcy, (2d Ed.) 112, § 14. And in Kesner v, Trigg, 98 U. S. 50, no question was made but that the assignee took the estate by the curtesy. The same principle is found in Re Bright, L. E. 13 Gh. Div. 413, where a fund of personal estate was settled on the mother for life, and after her death on the children of the marriage, and it was held that the assignee in bankruptcy of one of the children took bis. share, though the life tenant did not die for nearly ten years after the bankruptcy. �Has our statute changed this resuit? I think not. Standing alone, section 2481 of the Code would exempt the whole estate of the husband from liability for his debts, and, as a consequence, by oper- ation of the bankruptcy aot itself, (Eev. St. § 5045,) it would not pass to the assignee. But section 2482 of the Code operates to restrict the quantity of the husband's estate that is exempt to so much of it as is measured by his wife's life. He holds the estate for his own life, and it is exempt from execution /or the life of another, and therefore not necessarily for his own life. He asks here too much — ^more than this statute in terms gives him — when he elaims exemption for the whole estate by the curtesy coextensive with his own life. That the statute has not abridged his common-law estate by limiting it to the life of his wife is plain, because he daims it after her death, and during his own life, and this he can do only on the theory that the statute has not interfered with his common-law estate in this land in regard to its quantity. If the statute has pre- served to him his tenancy by the curtesy it has preserved it to his creditors, because the statute only cuts them off during the life of the wife. �It has been said in the books that a tenancy by the curtesy stands somewhat as if the wife had made a lease of the land to her husband ��� �