Definition
An archaic term for an assignment for the benefit of creditors that includes directions to the assignee to prefer one or more specified creditors over others — either by paying their claims in full before any remaining creditors receive a dividend, or by some other mechanism of priority. The term is more commonly encountered in historical legal sources as "preferential assignment." In modern practice, the standalone form "ences" has fallen entirely out of use; the concept survives under the terms "preferential assignment" or "preference" in bankruptcy and insolvency law.
Common Confusion
"Ences" appears to be a truncated or corrupted form of "preferences" as it appears in Black's Law Dictionary, likely a typographical artifact of the original print source. Researchers encountering the term in historical documents should treat it as equivalent to "preferences" or "preferential assignment" rather than as a distinct legal concept. Do not conflate with the broader modern term "preference" in bankruptcy law, which carries a specific technical meaning under federal statute relating to pre-bankruptcy transfers that favor one creditor over others.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is primarily a trap for historical corpus researchers. The standalone entry "ences" in Black's Law Dictionary is almost certainly a scanning or typesetting artifact — the beginning of the word "preferences" lost in reproduction. Researchers working with digitized or OCR-processed versions of older legal dictionaries will encounter similar truncations and should cross-reference surrounding entries to reconstruct the intended headword.
If you have encountered "ences" in a primary source document rather than a dictionary, context will determine whether the writer intended "preferences," "evidences," "offences," or another term. The insolvency-law meaning described in the Black's entry points clearly toward "preferences" or "preferential assignment."
The substantive concept — directing an assignee to satisfy certain creditors ahead of others — was a significant and contested feature of pre-bankruptcy insolvency practice. Such preferential assignments were disfavored under early American common law and eventually addressed by federal bankruptcy legislation, which treats certain pre-insolvency preferences as voidable transfers. Researchers tracing the evolution of creditor priority rules should move from this entry to the fuller treatment under "preferential assignment" and "preference."
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary defines the term as "an assignment for the benefit of creditors, with directions to the assignee to prefer a specified creditor or class of creditors, by paying their claims in full before the others receive any dividend, or in some other manner," and notes it is more usually termed a "preferential assignment." This is the sole historical dictionary source available for this entry, and its brevity — combined with the anomalous headword — strongly supports the conclusion that "ences" is a fragmentary reproduction of "preferences" rather than an independent term of art. No other standard historical legal dictionaries (Bouvier, Burrill, Tomlin) carry a standalone entry under "ences," which further confirms this reading.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Preferential Assignment; Preferences in Bankruptcy; Assignment for Benefit of Creditors.