428 JONES v. JONES.—1 BLAND.

According to this rule, the mutation, from realty to personalty,
can only be finally consummated by a series of separate and dis-
tinct acts: first, there must be a judgment or judicial authority
given by the Court to sell; secondly, the commissioners, or agents
employed to make the sale, must have reported to the Court, that
they had, in pursuance of that authority, made a sale; thirdly, the
Court must have ratified the sale so made and reported; and lastly,
the purchaser must have either paid the purchase money or have
given his bonds to secure the payment of it to the party entitled.
When all these acts have been done, the judicial function of the
Court, in relation to the subject, has finally terminated; and the
fund which had been submitted to its operation has been, thereby,
* changed from one kind of property into another; from real
454 into personal estate.

With regard to the mutation of the estate, the rule in equity
seems to be different; or, at least, it appears to have been held,
that all four of those several acts are not essentially necessary to
produce a conversion of the property from realty to personalty.
For, where, on a bill in Chancery to obtain a partition of the real
estate of an intestate among his heirs, one of whom was then a
feme covert; on the lands being deemed incapable of division, a
decree was passed ordering them to be sold; and the trustee, ap-
pointed for that purpose, reported, that he had sold them accord-
ingly; which sale was finally ratified by the Court. After which,
and before the purchase money had been paid, and before any
order had been passed by the Court, directing the manner in which
the purchase money should be distributed, the feme covert died;
and then her husband died. Upon which the interest of the feme
covert, at the time of her death, was viewed in the nature of an
equitable chose in action ; her individual legal estate in the realty
having been changed by the decree, the sale, and the ratification
thereof, into a floating undivided interest of that kind.

Hence it appears, that, in equity, the mutation is effected by
the mere preliminary operations of the Court, or by those judicial
proceedings which are always had as preparatory only to that par-
tition of the property among the parties which is the sole object of
the suit. And it was further held, that although the husband was
a party to the suit, yet he could not be considered as having, by
those proceedings alone, reduced this interest of his wife's into
possession; because the proceeding only directs a sale of the prop-
erty, and the proceeds to be brought into Court. It professes not
to ascertain the rights of the respective claimants; it makes no
distribution, it awards no payment, either immediately or contin-
gently, to husband and wife, or either of them; no such decree
has passed as is equivalent to a judgment at law, which would
vest the chose of the wife absolutely in the surviving husband; nor
has any order been passed by the Court directing the proceeds to