Arabic (حوالة الدين) for debt assignment/ transfer; a type of hiwalah (also spelled hiwala) which involves the assignment/ transfer of debt (dayn) from one party (the assignor/ transferor or in Arabic al-muheel) to another party (the payer or in Arabic al-muhal alaihi). According to Hanafi jurists, it is the assignment/ transfer of the liability for a debt from the legal personality of the debtor to the legal personality of the liable person named in the contract. In this sense, an assignment of debt is different from a guarantee/ suretyship contract in that the latter entails the conjoining of liabilities rather than the transfer of liabilities. Therefore, once a transfer is legally made, the original debtor is relieved from repayment requests.
In general, the assignor is a debtor to the assignee, where the debt gets transferred to a third party (al-muhal elaihi or the payer) who becomes the new debtor. In this type of hiwalah, the debtor is the initiator of assignment.
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