rkillings Jan 9, 2016:

this question has come up before … and the same two answers were suggested back in 2009. IMO, better to be exact and stick with the civil-law term 'delegation' than to be only approximately correct and substitute 'assignment'. Delegation in this sense exists in Scotland but not so much in common law elsewhere in the Anglosphere. Handle it as you would naked ownership or usufruct, neither of which is easily forced into a common-law mould.

What is going on is not equivalent to common-law 'assignment', which requires only the consent of the assignor and the assignee. In a French civil-law delegation, the delegator delegates a *claim* on the delegatee along with the duties of performing an obligation (i.e., a debt) to a third party. Unlike in an assignment, all three parties have to consent to the arrangement. Unlike in a novation, there is no complete substitution of obligor if the
delegation is not perfected.