and it is even more clearly an exchange when the types differ.

Thus, their equality in amount entails two cases:

First: transferring the lesser amount to the greater, on the basis that the creditor takes the amount due to him and the remainder remains owed by the assigned debtor. This is permissible.

Second: transferring the greater amount to the lesser. According to the author’s view, this is not valid. But how can it be made valid?

The answer is that the creditor should remit the excess, and then the debtor may transfer him to one who owes the equal amount.

If he says, “I want to be completely discharged from my obligation to him,” we say: the way to achieve this is for the creditor to remit the excess and then for the debtor to transfer him. This is an unobjectionable legal device, because it is a device used to achieve something permissible.

If it were said that, in the absence of scholarly consensus on this issue, it is valid even without an explicit remission, that would be a tenable view. For the creditor’s accepting a transfer to someone owing less than his entitlement is, in substance, a remission. Instead of the creditor saying, “I release you,” and the debtor then saying, “I transfer you,” the transfer alone is deemed sufficient.

In summary: “A debt transfer is a means of settling a debt. If it turns into an exchange, then the well-known conditions of sale must be observed.” This is the governing principle. As for the conditions mentioned by the author, as noted previously, some of them are open to question.

“When valid, it transfers the claim to the liability of the assigned debtor, and the transferor is discharged. The transferor’s consent is required, but not that of the assigned debtor, nor that of the creditor when he is transferred to a solvent debtor.”

His statement, “When valid, it transfers the claim to the liability of the assigned debtor, and the transferor is discharged”: a debt transfer is valid when all its conditions are fulfilled and all impediments are absent, because every