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Doctrine

Abatement of debts and legacies

Contract and Property Doctrine

Abatement of debts and legacies is a common law doctrine of wills. It holds that when the equitable assets of a deceased person are not sufficient to satisfy all the creditors in full, their debts must abate proportionately and the creditors must accept a dividend. The same applies to legacies when the funds or assets out of which they are payable fall short: they abate in proportion, unless priority is given specially to a particular legacy, and annuities are subject to the same rule as general legacies. The usual order of abatement runs from intestate property, to the residuary of the estate, to general devises, demonstrative devises and specific devises, while non-probate property such as life insurance policies does not abate.

Facts
Classification
Doctrine Category
Property Law 1
Connections

In Area Of Law

Entity-backed identity for the doctrine category value this doctrine already carries as an enum fact, resolved to a doctrine entity by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The enum fact itself stays on the entity unchanged.

In Legal System

Source Abatement of debts and legacies (Wikipedia)
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Abatement of debts and legacies
a common law doctrine of wills that holds that when the assets of a deceased person are not sufficient to satisfy fully all the creditors, debts must abate proportionatelyView the Source
Abatement of debts and legacies (Wikipedia)
In Legal System: Common Law, Wikipedia lead sentence
Quote, In Legal System: Common Law, Wikipedia lead sentence
Abatement of debts and legacies is a common law doctrine of wills that holds that when the equitable assets of a deceased person are not sufficient to
View the Source
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