seized under legal process, and calls attention to the fact that in such cases the debtor is required to take certain steps prescribed by statute in order t osecure his exemptions. Under the statute such debtor must list all of his property under oath, and it must be appraised by a board of three appraisers, and then the exemptions must be selected by the debtor. And counsel argue that inasmuch as the machinery for securing exemptions to an execution or attachment debtor is wholly wanting in the statute providing for voluntary assignments, it necessarily follows that the exemptions themselves do not exist in such cases.
We think the position taken by counsel is untenable. To sustain such a view of the law would involve an extremely harsh, as well as very narrow, construction of a statute which in its essential characteristics is highly beneficial, and one which has uniformly received a liberal construction at the hands of the courts. It is true that the statutes providing for voluntary assignments for the benefit of creditors does not itself attempt to grant to debtors specific exemptions; but, on the contrary, the statute everywhere takes for granted and assumes that certain of the debtor's property is already exempt, and beyond the reach of any creditor, by force or other statutes. But the statute regulating assignments repeatedly makes reference to the debtor’s exemptions, and carefully guards such exemptions. “Property exempt from execution” does not “pass to the assignee” where the instrument of assignment is silent concerning the same; much less, therefore will such property pass where it is expressly reserved in the instrument. Comp. Laws, § 4677.
Section 5128, id, embraces a clear expression of the legislative will to the effect that debtors shall not be stripped of all their property, but at their election may hold, in addition to absolute exemptions, $1,500 worth of personal property as against creditors. The ordinary mode whereby the creditor lays hands on the property of the debtor is by attachment or execution, and in cases of such seizures of the debtor's effects the legislature has been careful to guard and hedge about the debtor’s exempt property in such a way that it will be secured to him and his family. In cases of voluntary assignments, no
