Cite as: 507 U. S. 111 (1993)
Kennedy, J., dissenting
fited from a transaction that the law accepts as capable of creating property rights instead of merely transferring possession, are entitled to test their claim of ownership under § 881(a)(6) against what the Government alleges to be its own superior right. The outcome, that one who had defective title can create good title in the new holder by transfer for value, is not to be condemned as some bizarre surprise. This is not alchemy. It is the common law. See Independent Coal & Coke Co. v. United States, 274 U. S. 640, 647 (1927); United States v. Chase Nat. Bank, 252 U. S. 485, 494 (1920); Wright-Blodgett Co. v. United States, 236 U. S. 397, 403 (1915). By contrast, the donee of drug trafficking proceeds has no valid claim to the proceeds, not because she has done anything wrong but because she stands in the shoes of one who has. It is the nature of the donor's interest, which the donee has assumed, that renders the property subject to forfeiture. Cf. Otis v. Otis, 167 Mass. 245, 246, 45 N. E. 737 (1897) (Holmes, J.) ("A person to whose hands a trust fund comes by conveyance from the original trustee is chargeable as a trustee in his turn, if he takes it without consideration, whether he has notice of the trust or not. This has been settled for three hundred years, since the time of uses").
When the Government seeks forfeiture of an asset in the hands of a donee, its forfeiture claim rests on defects in the title of the asset in the hands of the donor. The transferee has no ownership superior to the transferor's which must be forfeited, so her knowledge of the drug transaction, or lack thereof, is quite irrelevant, as are the arcane questions concerning the textual application of § 881(a) to someone in a donee's position. The so-called innocent owner provisions of § 881(a)(6) have ample scope in other instances, say where a holder who once had valid ownership in property is alleged to have consented to its use to facilitate a drug transaction. Furthermore, whether respondent's marital rights were present value or an antecedent debt and whether either could provide the necessary consideration for a bona fide pur-
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