Prefer

1.

To bring or lay a matter before a court: as, to prefer a criminal charge, a petition in divorce.

3.

To give advantage, priority (q. v.), or privilege to. Specifically, to favor one or more creditors over others, wlien the debtor has not the means with which to pay all alike. In this sense are used the expressions preferred or preferential — assignment, bonds, creditors, dividend, shares, stock. See Dividend, 3; Stock, 3 (8). "Preferred " means that the thing to which it is attached has some advantage over another thing of the same character, which but for this advantage would be like the other."

1 R. S. §§ 2257-^1. 2 The Tosemite Valley Case, 15 Wall. 77 (1872), cases. Field, J. » Bohall V. Dilla, 114 U. S. 51 (1886), Field, J. " Fletcher, Appellant, 136 Mass. 342 (1884).

Preference

A payment to one creditor which will or, possibly, may give him an advantage over others. 1 In the absence, of a bankrupt law, a failing debtor may prefer one creditor to another by a deed, a judgment, or other means, except, in some States, by an assignment in trust. The effect may be to delay a creditor not preferred, in fact to prevent his obtaining payment at all; but if the honest intent was to pay ^he preferred debt, the transaction is not invalidated bj the statute of 13 Elizabeth. That statute Is aimed at intended fraud, — at transfers of property or preferences which are not bona fide, but collusive arrangements " to delay, hinder, or defraud " particular creditors.' The mere existence of a desire that a particular creditor may succeed by suit,, judgment, execution, and levy, in obtaining a preference, is not sufficient to establish that the debtor "procured or suffered" his property to be taken on legal process with intent to prefer such creditor, if the proceedings were the usual proceedings in a suit, unaided by any act of the debtor, either by facilitating the proceedings as to time or method, or by obstructing other creditors who Otherwise would obtain priority." If debtors could not give preferences to bona fide creditors, while they yet retain dominion over their property, the transaction of business would be embarrassed.* See Conveyance, 2, Fraudulent; Suffer.