Definition
Assets entre mains (Law French: "assets in hand") refers to the personal property in the possession of an executor or administrator that is available and applicable to the payment of a deceased person's debts and legacies. The term describes the subset of a decedent's estate that has actually come into the hands of the personal representative and can be presently used to satisfy obligations of the estate. It is distinguished from assets that may exist in theory but have not yet been reduced to possession or are not yet available for distribution.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a navigational landmark for researchers working in probate, estate administration, and creditors' rights materials from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It appears frequently in English equity and common law sources governing executor liability, and understanding it is essential to reading those materials accurately.
The critical research trap is anachronism: modern probate law absorbs this concept entirely into the broader category of "personal assets" or simply "assets of the estate," without using the Law French phrase. A researcher encountering assets entre mains in a nineteenth-century American treatise or English chancery report should not assume the term maps cleanly onto any single modern statutory category. The concept it described — property actually in hand, presently administrable — survives, but the vocabulary does not.
Researchers should also note that executor liability in historical sources turned heavily on whether assets had come entre mains. An executor who paid one creditor when others had equal or superior priority could face personal liability, but only to the extent of assets that had actually come into their hands. This made the precise scope of the concept legally consequential, not merely descriptive. Arguments about what counted as "in hand" generated considerable case law in English courts.
For corpus researchers: this term connects the Law Mind materials on executors and administrators to the broader body of doctrine on asset classification — particularly the distinction between legal and equitable assets, and the distinction between assets that descend and assets that are administered. It bridges probate procedure and creditor priority doctrine.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement on this term, both defining it as "assets in hand; assets in the hands of executors or administrators, applicable for the payment of debts," and both citing identical primary authorities: Termes de la Ley, 2 Blackstone's Commentaries 510, and 1 Crabb's Real Property.
Burrill adds two valuable details Black's omits. First, Burrill quotes directly from Finch's Law: "Executors must answer all certain duties of the testator, having sufficient of his chattels, which we call assets entre mains, to do it." This formulation is instructive because it shows the term operating as a condition of executor liability — the duty to pay debts arises only when the executor has sufficient assets entre mains. Second, Burrill explicitly notes that the term was called "personal assets" in modern (i.e., nineteenth-century) law, signaling that even by that era the Law French phrase was archaic and had been absorbed into updated terminology.
Neither dictionary addresses the boundary disputes that gave the concept practical significance — specifically, what property qualified as "in hand" when assets were contested, illiquid, or subject to claims by third parties. Researchers needing that dimension must move to the primary sources cited, particularly Crabb and Blackstone, and to the English chancery reporters.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is rooted in English law and appears primarily in English and early American sources. American probate law developed its own vocabulary by the mid-nineteenth century, and assets entre mains does not appear as a term of art in modern American statutes or court opinions. Researchers working in American jurisdictions after roughly 1850 should expect to find the underlying concept expressed through statutory language governing personal representatives and the administration of decedents' estates.