Preferential payments, in bankruptcy, administra-tion of estates of persons dying insolvent, and winding up of a company:-One year's rates and taxes, four months' salaries of clerks up to fifty pounds, and two months' wages of labourers or workmen, up to twenty-five pounds (labourers in husbandry paid partly in a lump sum at the end of the year of hiring to have the whole or proportionate part of that sum). Also sums due under the Workmen's Compensation Acts, the National Insurance Acts (Health and Unemployment and Contributory Pensions). These debts rank equally between them unless the assets are insufficient, in which case they are to abate in equal proportions. By the (English) Bankruptcy Act, 1914 (see s. 34), the preference was extended to apprentices. See the (English) Bankruptcy Act, 1914, s. 33, and the (English) Companies Act, 1929, s. 264, by which these debts are directed to be paid in priority to all others; and by s. 264 (4) (b) of the Companies Act, 1929, these debts are to have priority over the claims of holders of debentures or debenture stock under any floating charge created by a company. The debts are a first charge on goods or proceeds distrained upon within three months of the date of the receiving order or winding-up order, but if the landlord pays the debts he is to have a first charge for the debts on the goods or proceeds (English) Bankruptcy Act, 1914, s. 35, and Companies Act, 1929, s. 264 (6); and see also (English) County Courts Act, 1933, ss. 134 and 153, as to administration of small estates; Cairney v. Back, (1906) 2 KB 746; Re Beeton, (1913) 2 Ch 279; Re Havana Co., (1916) 1 Ch 8, and Lewis Merthyr Collieries, Ltd., Lloyds Bank v. Company, (1929) 1 Ch 498; and STANNARIES.
As to improper preferential payments, see FRADULU-ENT PREFERENCES.
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