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520 POST v. MACKALL.
having obtained a decree for a sale of the realty founded on an ad-
mission of the truth of that allegation, they cannot now have a
decree over, against the administrator, for any balance of their
claims, that may remain unsatisfied; or take any other advantage
of the absolute nature of those judgments which they have thus
abandoned; or be regarded in any other way than as standing
among those general creditors whose claims are not barred by the
statute of limitations, (z)
In England and here, formerly, it was necessary, in the adminis-
tration of a deceased debtor's estate, to attend to the distinction
between debts due by specialty and those due by simple contract;
because, according to the order in which the law directed the debts
of the deceased to be paid, those due by specialty were to be first
paid; and where the assets were insufficient to pay all, and the exe-
cutor or administrator, in violation of this rule, paid them away in
satisfaction of simple contract debts, he thereby made himself liable
for the remaining unsatisfied specialty debts, (a) Where, however,
the assets were sufficient to pay all, a simple contract debt might
be safely paid, at any time, without regard to this precedence in
favour of specialty debts, (b) But by our acts of Assembly, pre-
scribing the order in which the debts of the deceased shall be paid
from the personal assets; (e) and, on a deficiency thereof, from his
real assets; (d) the distinction between debts due by simple con-
tract and by specialty has been, in this respect, abolished; and,
therefore, there can be no occasion to advert to it for any such pur-
pose. It should, nevertheless, be attended to in all cases where
the debtor has, by deed, bound his heirs as well as himself for the
payment of the debt, as, in such cases, the creditor thereby has it
in his power to sue and recover, at common law, from the heir
alone, merely in respect of such assets descended, which the cre-
ditor cannot do upon any simple contract, or even specialty, where-
by the heir has not been expressly bound, (e)
But it still continues to be important, here as in England, in re-
ference to the statute of limitations, to look to the distinction be-
tween specialty and simple contract debts; because of the different
limitations prescribed as an allowable bar to each, (f) A creditor
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(z) Sheppard v.. Kent, 2 Vern. 435. —(a) Pinchon's case, 9 Co. 88; Dep, Com.
Gui. 125—(b) Turner v. Turner, 1 Jac. & W. 39. —(c) 1798, ch. 101, sub ch. 8, s.
17. —(d) 1785, ch. 80, s, 7. —(e) Hammond v. Hammond, 2 Bland, 325. --(f) 1715,
ch. 23, s. 2 and 6.
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