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No debtor should be permitted to conceal or dispose of his property for the purpose of preventing his creditors from satisfying their legal claims. In ethical terms which have become classic, a debtor should be just to his creditors before he can rightfully be generous with his property for the benefit of others. The original and primary purpose of bankruptcy legislation has been, and continues to be, a just distribution of the bankrupt's property among his creditors. To help effectuate the purpose of bankruptcy legislation, the fraudulent conveyance is of major importance in three distinct respects. In the first place, the so-called fraudulent conveyance or concealment constitutes an act of bankruptcy. In the second place, the trustee in bankruptcy is empowered by the Bankruptcy Act to set aside such transactions and bring the property back into the bankrupt's estate as an asset for the payment of claims of creditors. In the third place, the debtor's fraudulent conveyance can be used to deprive him, as a bankrupt, of his discharge. As the title to this article indicates, the writer has undertaken only to survey these three facets of the field of the fraudulent conveyance; there is no attempt to give an exhaustive treatment.

In 1571 Parliament passed a statute making illegal and void any transfer made for the purpose of hindering, delaying, or defrauding creditors.' This law, commonly known as the Statute of Elizabeth, was intended to curb what was thought to be a wide-spread abuse. Until the seventeenth century, England had certain sanctuaries into which the King's writ could not enter. A sanctuary was not merely the interior of a church, but certain precincts defined by custom or royal grant. Debtors could take sanctuary in one of these precincts, live in relative comfort, and be immune from execution by their creditors. It was thought that debtors usually removed themselves to one of these precincts only after selling their property to friends and relatives for a nominal sum with the tacit understanding that the debtors would reclaim their property after their creditors gave up or compromised their claims. The Statute of Elizabeth limited this practice. The basic prohibition of this statute, which prevents debtors from making transfers that hinder, delay, or defraud their creditors, has survived for over four centuries. A debtor cannot manipulate his affairs in order to shortchange his creditors and pocket the difference. Those who collude with a debtor in these transactions are not protected either. An individual creditor who discovers his debtor's assets have been fraudulently conveyed can reduce his claim to judgment and have the sheriff levy on the property that is now no longer in the debtor's hands (as long as the property is not in the hands of a bona fide purchaser for value). 'The difficulty that courts and legislatures have faced for hundreds of years has been one of trying to define what kinds of transactions hinder, delay, or defraud creditors. From very early on,common law judges developed per se rules, known as "badges of fraud," that would allow the courts to treat a transaction as a fraudulent conveyance even though no specific evidence suggested that the debtor tried to profit at his creditors' expense. For ...

Main description: Das englische Gläubigeranfechtungsrecht (fraudulent conveyances law) beruht auf einem Mosaik aus Gesetzen und Urteilen. Constantin Willems analysiert eine Vielzahl dieser Mosaiksteine und weist nach, dass eine große inhaltliche Nähe zum kontinentalen, in Tradition der römischrechtlichen actio Pauliana stehenden Recht besteht. Insbesondere hinsichtlich der Gesetze Henry VIII. (1542–3) und Elizabeth I. (1571) sowie der Leitentscheidungen Case de Bankrupts (1589) und Twyne's Case (1602) liegt eine Rezeption kontinentalen Rechts nahe. -- Willems belegt, dass das englische Gläubigeranfechtungsrecht trotz seiner Inselposition vom kontinentalen, auf römischen Rechtsquellen beruhenden Recht beeinflusst wurde, und stellt damit auf diesem Gebiet den Mythos der »noble isolation« historisch in Frage. Diese Betonung gemeinsamer Wurzeln von kontinentalem und englischem Recht ist auch angesichts einer europäischen Rechtsvereinheitlichung von Interesse, da nur, wenn auch das englische Recht »europäischen Charakter« hat und damit gemeinsame Grundlagen einer europäischen Rechtskultur bestehen, eine Vereinheitlichung des Rechts in Europa praktikabel ist.

Main description: Das englische Gläubigeranfechtungsrecht (fraudulent conveyances law) beruht auf einem Mosaik aus Gesetzen und Urteilen. Constantin Willems analysiert eine Vielzahl dieser Mosaiksteine und weist nach, dass eine große inhaltliche Nähe zum kontinentalen, in Tradition der römischrechtlichen actio Pauliana stehenden Recht besteht. Insbesondere hinsichtlich der Gesetze Henry VIII. (1542–3) und Elizabeth I. (1571) sowie der Leitentscheidungen Case de Bankrupts (1589) und Twyne's Case (1602) liegt eine Rezeption kontinentalen Rechts nahe. -- Willems belegt, dass das englische Gläubigeranfechtungsrecht trotz seiner Inselposition vom kontinentalen, auf römischen Rechtsquellen beruhenden Recht beeinflusst wurde, und stellt damit auf diesem Gebiet den Mythos der »noble isolation« historisch in Frage. Diese Betonung gemeinsamer Wurzeln von kontinentalem und englischem Recht ist auch angesichts einer europäischen Rechtsvereinheitlichung von Interesse, da nur, wenn auch das englische Recht »europäischen Charakter« hat und damit gemeinsame Grundlagen einer europäischen Rechtskultur bestehen, eine Vereinheitlichung des Rechts in Europa praktikabel ist.