do you have any reason to think that we should not decide this case now debtor's interest in exam property of pennsylvania's rules of statutory construction provide that in the case of doubt the intent of the general assembly is to be ascertained by the object to be obtained by the statute end quote and the consequences of a particular interpretation of the the act in question provides remedies for their progeny and transfer of an asset it's definitional terms clearly interest in exempt property what just ask a dumb question what is the legal source for the overall rule that this or mrs titus are liable for wage deposits that were not all complete spent on under state law brought into the code by five forty four is the remedy in the pennsylvania statute or is it a five fifty the bankruptcy five fifty is never played in this case so i believe the remedy has to be hunted at the state law which a problem here and what is wrong with this issue as has happened is that it creates personal liability on the part of the co tenants by the entireties and the really the only real remedy here because the first transfer rea you do with the fact that we've already spoken presidentially out of the same of the same transaction that led to this financial circumstance from any of the partners of this law firm where it's already been determined that the deposit of the wages into an account is sufficient to make it a transfer item and in this instance an entireties account is simply a type of ownership between two people and account if the and tired as you're suggesting is as if it's an independent entity making the shareholders of a corporation liable for probably only transfer that corporation which you would not do but you're suggesting that the entirety of account is equivalent to an entity of a corporation yes and in it that is still a we will accept that we have to have going in banks would you have to do but i understand you do not going back when it's really questions of state law and which which is what we have here but when it approached it on that basis stipulation yes there are certain deposits that are wage deposits certain dead or non wage deposits it appears that non wage deposits your argument would be are excluded from the pot of which went back to judge now the judge regressed eight but two hundred sixty eight thousand is unexplained yes that's right and so what makes you if you can explain it what makes you think you can deduct it from the ultimate amount that will wash it or not if you do it's first of all understand that these are deposits made into account during a time period two thousand and three to two thousand and ten in the trial which we were called upon to explain this occurred in twenty sixty think about in your personal life i want you can explain to remember what occurred in your account that you have two years ago four years ago six let alone ten to fifteen years ago but this is an action is specifically directed to the issue that the one that wage deposits into the account were fraudulent transfers under the mining case in the mine and dr a credit is available because the burden is on the trustee a credit becomes available against what we have characterized as a brac shabelle expenditures which is a burden that you're asking that it be placed on the trustee to work spleen the unexplained no not not a lawyer on it into the trustees burden is to show that the wage deposits were used to fund objectionable expenditures people in the best position to explain the unexplainable upon you longer what we can explain is the don't not wages and it's a case of the complaints above the positive wages and i'm just thinking years from two thousand and three to two thousand and ten they were not told in two thousand till two thousand and twelve or two thousand and fourteen that they had a burden of coming forward in explaining all these deposits because nobody knew that stipulation that they're not wages that they're not wages but it also doesn't explain the source right and we don't think that that should make any difference that we foresee that that was the law or not that the court applied and you're trying to suggest the court heard by not holding yes i am been the source of paying down the non necessities objectionable expenditures wasn't this actually an effort by the court to help you keep your clients not have every dollar of their way that is being taxed so i mostly the kind of a decision to make it more the point for the get more even why should it matter if it's a social security deposit or a refund from a for a farm where they've done something or withdraw from the securities other money the wage money in the account stays there and the creditor has a right to go take the money that's in the account and that's what happened and whether it then shouldn't be analysis speak your mind has to well i suppose they are but again if you want you to establish that the deposit was not a wage the positive i think the mission's been accomplished at that point because this is a case that's only focused on the wage deposits as being the fraudulent transfers any other deposit goes into the account serves as a credit against what is a liability for objectionable expenditures i think it's irrelevant really where the source is once you determine that it's not a wage in the question if you put it another way is what judge conti asked be done on remain and does that put on the titus is the burden of production or the burden of persuasion burden of production ok burden of production the burden of persuasion never moves from the trustee and what she asked on remand we accomplished we got a stipulation that they were not wage deposits prior to the time she remained if we didn't have that relations well i thought if i am playing out the string here that perhaps what was done yes you stated the law correctly but what in fact may have happened is they had to persuade the court that the two hundred sixty eight thousand dollars was explainable well they bickered with it what we did was we had paid a stipulation that they weren't ways ok now let me ask you this in terms of how you got a part in the pot is the wages that are in the account that's what could be recovered in connection with a project sense of that we know is wages and forty eight percent forty eight cents is not wages by take a penny out what are the chances of that being wages that are recover that's the interesting question report proportionality and what you bring job market will prompt the great probabilities what is the if i take a penny out what is the chance that that is wages and what is the chance that's not wages for you it would some of it's recoverable for the progeny conveyance some of it isn't and you have again one hundred cents and the division is roughly fifty to forty eight why not just say fifty two percent is wages forty percent is not in whatever's not wages i mean you sort of getting your own you're getting your legal argument correct wage deposits are not wages and therefore they're excluded from the pot yes that that might be but i have to say honestly judge i don't think we should even get to the question of the allocation because yes there was a transfer but the question is to whom or to what in the transfer was to the entire visa state not to the titus's question a personal liability shouldn't even a rise trying to because i think that would leave the trustee of the trustees burden of showing that the wage dollars were actually spent on the non necessities to the trustee has to show all the elements of a yes that's the way to it's phrased you have to so if the trustee does show all the elements of a fraudulent conveyance now we're talking about the remedy and how you go about the method of calculating the amount that is paid out from that entireties account for the project conveyance but i think your honor what we're talking about is not the remedy we're talking about one of the elements which is showing that  have in your hands write down ok and here's a secret plan put it in this account while they're out that money they say i have that's great what do i get for this well the fact this they might get it what it does is leave other money in the systemically lation that it wasn't wages that the deposit what wages i don't think knowing the source should make any difference while on the right to the credit what's the calculation assume that the court would occur cl wages into the attire to capture is a fraud on transfer that's fine by the statute and b the court attic in our court and yes we need to come up with a remedy what is the calculation for the remedy the remedy would be it in that case if you my contention is accepted the remedy is against the entire state itself and you could have back wage deposits non wage deposits and in this case if you did that the judgment would move from whatever it was two hundred sixty eight thousand dollars to about five thousand dollars if you gave at the very becomes source of these deposits i think that that's absolutely irrelevant what we have is the stipulation that they want wages and that alone gives us the rights of the credit under the scheme that has been allowed in mine i really don't think that that's an issue morning honors neil would be on behalf of the bankruptcy trustee you know as i'd like to start out by underscoring an extremely important point there is no mandate or a single piece of authority there's no finding there's no holding it any of the cases before you mine stinger garden state welker waters or whether it says that the transfer entitled to a dollar for dollar offset but not in wage deposits that law doesn't exist i'm going to apologize in advance for my role in creating the most convoluted case of otherwise relatively simple concepts concepts that have been around for over seventy years in the commonwealth of pennsylvania i did play a role in that my predecessor attorney played a role in that five bankruptcy judges played a role in that we have hundreds and hundreds of pages of opinions in multiple cases from multiple judges let me let me back up and just ask it looks as if in the way back machine when people were trying to figure out what to appeal that whoever has the burden of persuasion in these cases whether it be you or the titus's cannot prevail because the account is sponsible it's intermixed and you have to come up with a way to to deal with that it looks as if what you appear old was hey the burden of production and the burden of persuasion are incorrect you can't put the burden of persuasion on us the trustee because it's an impossible task but what does that have to do with the methodology of how you calculate the project transfer  think is just points with saying we can't work in a vacuum i don't disagree that we possess the burden of persuasion what we need to persuade the court is where the trier of fact is that transfers were made from an individual judgment debtor entire piece account because it is protected from creditors the fact that we take it as being this thing that is not protected from creditors and putting it into something that is protected from creditors is in fact that transfer that benefits the co owner of that entire that's well established i possess the burden of a persuasion the trustee here possesses the burden of persuasion that goes transfers actually did occur in that fashion that's well established in this case there's no ninety nine percent of the facts are not in dispute here it's the mathematics as your honor suggested judge deborah how we calculate what we have and i can quickly turn to appendix page one zero four and three which was the appendix attached to judge agrees these opinion which is the one page calculation of how we got to the number and i'd like to emphasize that just so we're not confused because there's two numbers that fall within the two hundred thousand dollars category there's a two hundred sixty eight thousand dollars of unexplained deposits but that's not what formed the amount of the judgment the amount of the judgment was formed and now it's just i agree with most part but then we get to that little bit duction at the end of the six hundred thirty four thousand dollars of other trustee didn't argue that in the first instance how can we forgive such a a large change of position understandably first of all we think we did present this in the first appeal do you think you will because i think that's how you explain when in the record it demonstrates among other things a point heading in a brief in the first appeal that says the calculation method was correct bald in the center of the page e around in it she says that we're talking about the our burdens our burdens in compass everything we're talking about here the burden of proving up the deposits the burden of proving up the necessities the burden of proving up what's explainable what isn't explainable the vacuum that we're working in is just twenty six pointed out all those things fell under that category and might i remind the court that when that first appeal was taken we didn't have ninety percent of the evidence that we have now but who's fault is that that's not the court the court ruled that it was their fault the court ruled that it was the tightest this fall how does that change the methodology because mine is a burden of proof i've got to prove certain things to satisfy my elements of my cause of action on my ability the next is an arithmetic formula to come up with a judgement you can't get to your arithmetic without knowing what the numbers are we didn't know what the numbers were before judge compu we had no idea the only numbers we really knew was how much in wages but how does that change the math if you're gives you different numbers to plug in you came up with a calculation and i say i'm talking to your predecessor counsel but the trustee advocated for a particular mathematical formula all you're telling us now as well well only now we have different numbers to plug into the formula it's and but  what you want is to change the formula but that formula didn't have the impact at the time that it did now based on the numbers again back to judge at christie's appendix at appendix one zero four three all up and ninety percent of the numbers on the page were known and so the analysis could even being done this way the how he performed the analysis was novel but why would that be error for the district court it's within the district courts discretion to select a methodology for the arithmetic didn't abuse its discretion the fact that a party changes its position doesn't mean the district court heard this is suzette you preserve the argument you're making to us i know you're trying to say somehow the burden of proof burden of persuasion somehow it's connected with the ultimate arithmetic but why should the district court be deemed as making a mistake when they could elect whatever back not appropriate that's not mathematical formulae at once i don't believe that they can i don't keep it was up to the district court to determine this i think has already been determined and if i may go through the map i'll show you why but i'm going to set aside so we can end it so i can present my final are going on this point move forward we did lay out authority would suggest when it is that we can come back and talk about something that perhaps wasn't talked about with the same specificity in the prior appeal we've laid out those reasons one being the weather could pin itself which clarifies with better than anyone else has what the position of the court is already on the burden of proof it just made clear who had the burden of proof and production in persuasion but when it came to the methodology point the district that the third circuit made an observation of what methodology was used in black by the way which apparently was the same type of appropriate is within their authority so if we had a million dollar pot who would still be just working came from the judgment debtor there were nor there deposits into that million dollar pot and from that million dollar pot all we were left to was divided into pieces the piece that goes to goes to non necessities we wouldn't be here today and your school you're describing what a comma works exactly but but here you know we've we've got some language from an opinion i wrote way back when which is an issue is way beyond remand if it was not raised in a party's prior appeal and was not explicitly or implicitly we mandate for the proceedings it's called scrip it which is it three seventy two s third one ninety three if the first appeal to judge conti concedes that the calculation method for determining how much is recover is the correct methodology and the only thing is that he put the burden of persuasion on me and it's an impossible burden how is that not a waiver in a seventy five page opinion written by judge markets only half a page only a half a page deals with this issue because it wasn't before the court it didn't matter back then these issues didn't matter because of the very small amount of information that we were dealing with at the time and i specifically referred to appendix four you know two this is where judge markovitch otherwise gets it wrong because otherwise he was spot on and judge conti was otherwise spot on and of course this court has spot on and i argued the last two appeals to this court and it was spot on we all agree that what we should be looking at is simply the necessities to offset the amount of wages that were transferred in we never get to unexplained deposits we never get to any other deposit it was only one item a single item one hundred forty two thousand dollars or so security benefits that judge markets addressed in the case prior to it first going before judge time let me ask you to put on your futures hat for other cases with respect to the trustee you have a and entire it to answer the question i want to back up just for a minute and look at the very concept that we're dealing with here which is reasonably equivalent value the courts have held that the reason we're talking about recently quit of value is we find value  the debtor having to take care of itself him or herself so if it better makes a million dollars in transfers those wages into an entire piece account the debtor is allowed to live those have them assessed cities we're going to offset that so again in a very simplistic way if we have a million dollars that are transferred in wages into an entire day's account and it cost two hundred fifty thousand dollars over that same period of time to live otherwise necessities then the judgement is for seven hundred fifty thousand dollars a year advocating the total transfer what you're calling the total transfer or what some prior it was the other possible relevant cracked it and that's the calculation you're advocating yes your honor and if that's the calculation you advocated that at the time of the first trial you could have gotten from shear all of that wages you could have asked for discovery all of the necessity to add subtract that nice simple math question was what was the calculation you'd be advocating like you had let me give you let me give you a hypothetical and then we can come back to there's a million dollars in the account five hundred twenty thousand is wages four hundred eighty thousand is non wages there has been found to be a fraudulent transfer of the five hundred twenty in wages up that that and and the amount that's comparable is is wages for your house what method would you use to get the monies that you think are owed to come back to the estate as george markets said just as likely that those went to pay for the necessities as not now if not fifty fiftieth's forty percent right but it could have gone to pay for the wages because the would go the census with the senses are only two hundred thousand so we've got five to you could that's why i like the pereira pork approach that we put into the into the pleadings as well because we may never really know because how could we possibly do that how can we take this dollar for the pro rata approach to put in as an alternative approach wasn't first argued today this is again the first time it that when we have a simplistic case like let it when we have a simplistic case like over big or other gas where we have a non wage earner as a spouse then it's very easy to do it street where we have this situation where there are the understand the dangers here the danger is this we don't have a non wage earning spouse the million dollars goes into the account oh i mean over someone some money and i'm going to protect that money by liquidating an exempt asset somewhere look you're transferring in the assets away from a creditor however we're going to let you live you have to be able to spend your money on something but if i've got seventeen other sources from which i can spend that money why punish the creditor so it sounds to me like when this case went back when you were advocating the at some point the pro rata approach it seems that that takes care of the impossible burden of persuasion problem that exists i agree it would attack now let's assume for the moment we're stuck with the approach that the court gave which is the it's one line item your honor and that's again it appendix one zero four three we have eleven one point one million dollars in debt as wages we have the agreed upon oh we agreed finally here twenty times but we got there we agreed on what would be the necessities and we deduct those necessities and the rest should be our amount which is eight hundred ninety four thousand four hundred twenty dollars and eighty three cents it's the last it's the the second to last line and i'm judging because he's analysis where we all go wrong and he got to it because he did doctor the six hundred thirty four thousand dollars in these other deposits that could easily have paid for the better necessities and so we're saying remove that line item and you come up with eight hundred ninety four thousand four hundred twenty dollars and eighty three cents it needs to be that simple or if we go pro rata even if we can't explain the deposits but there are other deposits in this sphere of entities account then i believe we're if you are stuck with the non necessities minus non wage deposits if that's if we're stuck with that why is mr campbell not correct that you have to take out the two sixty in back to the concept of reasonably equivalent value why is it reason we couldn't value to the missus to have an extra two hundred sixty thousand dollars in unexplained deposits what value was given in exchange for the transfer the we should be able to get that back with the exception of necessities y o y to unexplained deposits somehow become part of the equation it doesn't make any mathematical sense here that the stipulation to the parties was a basketball and the amount that but he he did not recognize that the transfer occurred to mrs titus he said that he wouldn't see her as being liable till she exercise some control over the money in the account and if you don't go along with his rationale then what you're in effect doing is indorsing a marriage penalty the fact is that the tightest i would have been better off being unmarried in this situation because pennsylvania's law provides that when it's just a joint account on married people that the funds in the account are attributed to the respective co owners according to their respective contributions so in this case if they had been unmarried people and mr titus put his wages in only he would be deemed to be the owner of those wages and she wouldn't have any involvement but as this has evolved in the way it's come down she if she's considered a transfer or e of these wages should get the absurd result that we have here that when mr titus spent one hundred fifty five dollars to put flowers on his parents graves she was found to be liable to his creditor for that hundred fifty five dollars because it was held to be an objectionable expenditure is that the case that's what the result has been in this case that happened here he spent sixty five dollars to pay for his grandson's admission application to notre dame that was found to be a non necessity and she's helped libel to his credit or for that sixty five dollars he paid one hundred sixty eighty six dollars to buy pizza for minority grade school students city brought downtown to observe the operation of the courts these are people that he ran a moot court competition with he bought them pizza when they came downtown the court found that to be a non necessity and made her