Court Opinion

ID: 9780938
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 14:00:42.119435+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:09:34.719673
License: Public Domain

21-202
Mirlis v. Greer

                                          In the
                       United States Court of Appeals
                               For the Second Circuit
                                     ______________

                                    August Term, 2022

                  (Argued: February 21, 2023       Decided: August 30, 2023)

                                    Docket No. 21-202
                                     ______________

                                     ELIYAHU MIRLIS,

                                     Plaintiff-Appellee,

                                            –v.–

                                      SARAH GREER,

                                   Defendant-Appellant.

                                     ______________

                  Before:   WALKER, LYNCH, and ROBINSON, Circuit Judges.
                                   ______________

              Defendant-Appellant Sarah Greer appeals the district court’s
        judgment awarding damages to Plaintiff-Appellee Eliyahu Mirlis to
        recover funds Greer received as the result of various alleged
        fraudulent transfers. The district court entered a default against
        Greer as a sanction under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(b) for
        her repeated failure to comply with discovery orders, and ultimately
        entered a default judgment against Greer for fraudulent transfers,
      awarding Mirlis damages calculated based on three checks Greer
      drew from bank accounts she held jointly with her debtor husband.

            We conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion
      in determining that Greer’s noncompliance during discovery
      warranted a default. We also conclude that, on this record, Greer’s
      withdrawals from accounts she held jointly with her husband
      constitute fraudulent transfers under Connecticut law.             We
      accordingly AFFIRM.

            AFFIRMED.

                                ______________

                               MATTHEW K. BEATMAN, James M. Moriarty, John
                               L. Cesaroni (on the brief), Zeisler & Zeisler, P.C.,
                               Bridgeport, CT, for Plaintiff-Appellee

                               RICHARD P. COLBERT, Matthew J. Letten (on the
                               brief), Day Pitney LLP, New Haven, CT; Jonathan
                               J. Einhorn (on the brief), Law Office of Jonathan J.
                               Einhorn, New Haven, CT, for Defendant-Appellant.
                                 ______________

ROBINSON, Circuit Judge:

      Defendant-Appellant Sarah Greer appeals the district court’s judgment

awarding damages to Plaintiff-Appellee Eliyahu Mirlis to recover funds Greer

received as the result of an alleged fraudulent transfer—namely, money she

withdrew from bank accounts she held jointly with her debtor husband and placed

into her personal, individually held bank accounts.

                                        2
       The district court entered a default against Greer as a sanction under Federal

Rule of Civil Procedure 37(b) for her repeated failure to comply with discovery

orders, and ultimately entered a default judgment against Greer for fraudulent

transfers, awarding Mirlis damages calculated based on three checks Greer drew

from bank accounts she held jointly with her debtor husband.

       For the reasons set forth below, we conclude that the district court did not

abuse its discretion in determining that Greer’s noncompliance during discovery

warranted a default. We also conclude that, on this record, Greer’s withdrawals

constitute fraudulent transfers under the Connecticut Uniform Fraudulent

Transfer Act (“CUFTA”), Conn. Gen. Stat. §§ 52-552e, 52-552f, and Connecticut

common law. We accordingly AFFIRM.

                                        BACKGROUND

       Mirlis is a creditor of Greer’s husband, having secured a judgment against

him of over $21 million in June 2017. 1 See Mirlis v. Daniel Greer, No. 3:16-cv-678

(MPS), Judgment, Dkt. No. 163 (D. Conn. June 6, 2017). Greer’s husband was on

notice of the claims that gave rise to Mirlis’ underlying lawsuit since at least 2002,

1 Unless otherwise specified, the facts set forth here are drawn from the district court’s Ruling on
Motion for Default Judgment, Mirlis v. Greer, No. 3:18cv2082(MPS), 2021 WL 405886 (D. Conn.
Jan. 4, 2021), reconsideration denied, 2021 WL 1711649 (D. Conn. Apr. 30, 2021), and the facts alleged
in Mirlis’s complaint. Because the district court’s judgment was based on an order of default
against Greer, the district court appropriately accepted the facts alleged in Mirlis’s complaint as
true.

                                                  3
when the conduct giving rise to Mirlis’s claims against him began, and Greer

herself was on notice since at least May 2016, when the underlying lawsuit was

filed.

         As relevant to this appeal, in order to collect on the judgment against her

husband, Mirlis brought claims against Greer arising from three allegedly

fraudulent transfers to her. Greer and her husband held joint checking accounts

at Liberty Bank and Start Community Bank. The Liberty Bank account was

opened in January 2010, after Greer’s husband was on notice of the claims that

gave rise to the suit against him, see J. App’x 439 (reflecting a “Consumer Signature

Card” for the Liberty account dated January 13, 2010), and the Start account was

opened in February 2017, after Mirlis sued Greer’s husband, see also J. App’x 405-

07 (reflecting a “New Account Review Form” for the Start account dated February

17, 2017). Greer’s husband contributed all of the funds in the Liberty account, and

almost all of the funds in the Start account. 2

2 Greer testified that she did not know whether she had deposited any funds into the Start
account, and that, “[b]esides Social Security,” she would have had no funds available in 2017 to
have deposited in that account. J. App’x 425. In addition, Mirlis alleged that Greer deposited the
money she earned into a separate account owned solely by her. A review of the May and June
2017 Start bank statements (the only statements for this account in the record) confirms that the

                                                4
       In May 2017, about a week before the jury returned its verdict in the

underlying action between Mirlis and Greer’s husband, Greer drafted a $5,000

check from the Start account payable to herself. This check was then deposited

into an account Greer held solely in her own name. The next month, in June 2017,

after the jury verdict but a day before judgment was entered against Greer’s

husband, Greer drafted a $220,000 check from the Liberty account payable to

herself. Greer deposited this check into an account at another bank that she

recently opened solely in her name. Greer testified at her deposition that she

transferred the funds from the Liberty account “[b]ecause [she] did not want it

taken.” J. App’x 427. After judgment was entered in Mirlis’s action against Greer’s

husband, Greer wrote a $13,000 check drawn from the Start account; that check

Start account balance as of April 29, 2017 was $10,932.26, and that a total of approximately
$30,641.80 was deposited into the account between April 29 and Greer’s second withdrawal of
$13,000 on June 16, 2017. J. App’x 430-31, 434-35. The only record evidence of a deposit of social
security benefits for Greer reflects a $1,997.70 payment from the Social Security Administration
on May 24. J. App’x 431. (There was also a deposit of the same amount on June 28, 2017, but that
was after Greer made the withdrawals at issue in this case. J. App’x 435.) This is substantially
less than the $18,000 she withdrew that Mirlis contends constituted fraudulent transfers, and only
a small portion of the monies in the account as of April 29 or deposited thereafter by Greer’s
husband. In addition, Greer’s contributions to the Start account were further offset by payments
she made from the account to third parties. See, e.g., J. App’x 420, 422 (Greer acknowledging that
she made payments to third parties from the Start account in May and June 2017); J. App’x 432,
436 (copies of checks with Greer’s signature). Because Greer has not argued on appeal or in the
proceedings below that she personally contributed funds to the Start account, we need not
determine with more specificity her precise contributions to the account.

                                                5
was likewise deposited into an account held solely in her name. Greer did not

provide consideration for any of these checks.

        In December 2018, Mirlis sued Greer under Connecticut statutory and

common law to recover the funds Greer withdrew from the joint accounts. 3 Mirlis

alleged that Greer’s husband transferred the funds to Greer “to avoid paying” the

debt owed to Mirlis, J. App’x 18 ¶ 1, and that the transfers “were made with the

actual intent to hinder, delay or defraud” Greer’s husband’s creditors, J. App’x 25

¶ 49.

        Mirlis first served Greer with interrogatories and requests for production

regarding her finances in May 2019. Greer did not respond. In August 2019, the

district court ordered Greer to comply with the discovery requests within 14 days.

Greer did not timely respond. In October 2019, the court granted Mirlis’s motion

for sanctions and again ordered Greer to “respond in full to the outstanding

discovery requests.” J. App’x 269. The court also ordered Greer to pay Mirlis’s

attorney’s fees relating to the motion for sanctions and to file an affidavit setting

3 Mirlis also sued to recover funds transferred from the Yeshiva of New Haven to Greer’s
retirement accounts. Greer’s appeal with respect to those transfers and the related denial of her
motion for reconsideration is now moot because, after Greer filed her opening brief in the instant
appeal, this Court—at Mirlis’s request—remanded the case, and the district court amended its
judgment to exclude damages associated with these retirement transfers. For that reason, we
need not address the arguments in Greer’s opening brief challenging the district court’s award of
damages as to the retirement account transfers.

                                                6
forth with specificity the steps she had taken to comply with the discovery

requests. It warned that “[f]ailure to comply with this order may result in a default

judgment . . . .” J. App’x 269-70 (emphasis omitted). Greer filed an affidavit, but

her response to the court’s order was incomplete because she failed to produce the

requested financial documents, gave unresponsive answers to the interrogatories,

and failed to pay the sanctions award.

      In November 2019, Mirlis filed a second motion for sanctions, this time

seeking entry of default judgment in addition to an award of attorney’s fees. Greer

did not oppose the motion. In January 2020, the court ordered Greer to show cause

within 14 days as to why it should not enter a default against her for

noncompliance, explicitly warning Greer that her failure to respond would result

in the entry of default. Greer did not timely respond.       Thereafter, the district

court stayed further proceedings pending this Court’s resolution of the appeal in

the underlying case that led to the judgment against Greer’s husband. After this

Court affirmed that judgment in April 2020, Mirlis v. Daniel Greer, 952 F.3d 36 (2d

Cir. 2020), the district court again ordered Greer to show cause within 14 days as

to why it should not enter a default against her. Greer did not respond. On June

2, 2020, the district court entered a default against Greer pursuant to Fed. R. Civ.

P. 37(b). The court then invited Mirlis “to file a motion for default judgment as to

                                         7
damages, together with evidence[,] . . . that will allow the Court to calculate

damages with reasonable certainty.”                Sp. App’x 7.     Mirlis and Greer each

responded to the court’s order, and Greer requested an evidentiary hearing with

respect to damages. 4

       In January 2021, after reviewing Mirlis’s and Greer’s submissions and

determining that an evidentiary hearing was unnecessary, the district court

entered a default judgment against Greer for $238,000.00 plus $51,215.02 in

prejudgment interest on the claims at issue in this appeal. 5             In entering default

judgment, the court concluded that Greer’s three withdrawals from the joint

accounts held with her husband constituted intentional fraudulent transfers in

violation of CUFTA, Conn. Gen. Stat. § 52-552e(a)(1), constructive fraudulent

transfers in violation of § 52-552f(a) and § 52-552e(a)(2), and common law

fraudulent transfers.

       On appeal, Greer argues that the district court abused its discretion by

imposing the sanction of default, and she contends that, as a matter of law, the

three check transfers for which the district court awarded damages were not

4 Notably, Greer’s request for an evidentiary hearing focused on the uncertainties in calculating
damages for the retirement account transfers. See Greer’s Motion for Evidentiary Hearing, Dist.
Ct. Dkt. No. 112-1, at 4–5. With respect to the check transfers, Greer “conceded that [the] two
amounts [in the Start Account] might be suitable to calculation with reasonable certainty, upon
presentation of the required and appropriate affidavits.” Id. at 5.
5 For the reasons explained in note 3 above, the district court’s total judgment was higher.

                                               8
fraudulent transfers under CUFTA, Conn. Gen. Stat. §§ 52-552a-5521, or

Connecticut common law.

                                    DISCUSSION

I.       Default Sanction

         We review a district court’s imposition of sanctions under Rule 37 for abuse

of discretion, and the factual findings in support of the district court’s decision for

clear error. S. New England Tel. Co. v. Global NAPs Inc., 624 F.3d 123, 143 (2d Cir.

2010).

         Rule 37(b) provides that when a party fails to comply with a discovery

order, a court may impose sanctions, including “rendering a default judgment

against the disobedient party.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(b)(2)(A)(vi). A district court

judge should only enter the harsh penalty of default judgment in “extreme

circumstances,” where “a party fails to comply with the court’s discovery orders

willfully, in bad faith, or through fault.” John B. Hull, Inc. v. Waterbury Petroleum

Prods., Inc., 845 F.2d 1172, 1176 (2d Cir. 1988) (internal quotation marks omitted);

see also Marfia v. T.C. Ziraat Bankasi, N.Y. Branch, 100 F.3d 243, 249 (2d Cir. 1996).

In those extreme circumstances, however, “[d]efault procedures . . . provide a

useful remedy when a litigant is confronted by an obstructionist adversary. Under

such circumstances those procedural rules play a constructive role in maintaining

                                           9
the orderly and efficient administration of justice.” Enron Oil Corp. v. Diakuhara,

10 F.3d 90, 96 (2d Cir. 1993).

      In considering whether case-dispositive sanctions are within a district

court’s discretion under Rule 37, we have relied on the following non-exclusive

factors: “(1) the willfulness of the non-compliant party or the reason for

noncompliance; (2) the efficacy of lesser sanctions; (3) the duration of the period

of noncompliance; and (4) whether the non-compliant party had been warned of

the consequences of . . . noncompliance.” Agiwal v. Mid Island Mortg. Corp., 555

F.3d 298, 302 (2d Cir. 2009) (internal quotation marks omitted).

      Greer argues that the district court abused its discretion by imposing a

sanction—default judgment—that was “grossly disproportionate” to her actual

conduct. Appellant’s Br. 17. She contends that the district court gave insufficient

weight to the fact that Mirlis already had many of the records he requested in

discovery, that she did not have possession of the requested financial records and

was not sufficiently familiar with her and her husband’s finances to have gotten

them, and that she had been preoccupied with her husband’s then-pending

criminal trial.

      We conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion. As set forth

above, Greer repeatedly failed to respond to interrogatories and produce the

                                        10
documents Mirlis requested, in violation of the district court’s many orders. This

record supports the district court’s determination that Greer acted willfully, that

lesser sanctions would have been inadequate given Greer’s continued

noncompliance after multiple explicit warnings about the consequences of further

noncompliance, that Greer was given ample notice that her continued

noncompliance would result in sanctions, including the entry of default judgment,

and that her noncompliance spanned more than six months.

      With respect to Greer’s argument that her involvement in her husband’s

then-pending criminal trial interfered with her ability to respond to the discovery

requests and court orders, the district court did not abuse its discretion in relying

on the fact that Greer was originally obligated to respond to Mirlis’s discovery

requests well before her husband’s trial and that she failed to respond to the

court’s numerous show cause orders long after trial had ended. In addition, Greer

offers no support for her suggestion that, merely because she thought Mirlis

already had some of the requested financial documents, she could ignore the

discovery requests and the district court’s orders compelling her to make an

adequate response. And we have found none. Cf. Penthouse Int'l, Ltd. v. Playboy

Enterprises, Inc., 663 F.2d 371, 390 (2d Cir. 1981) (“Rule 37(d) makes it explicit that

a party properly served has an absolute duty to respond, that is, to . . . serve a

                                          11
response to requests for discovery under Rule 34[,] . . . and that the court in which

the action is pending may enforce this duty by imposing sanctions for its

violation.” (emphasis added)).

      Moreover, Greer’s lack of physical possession of certain bank records does

not excuse her noncompliance with the court’s order. Mirlis was entitled to

request records in Greer’s “possession, custody, or control.” Fed. R. Civ. P.

34(a)(1). “Control” does not require “actual physical possession of the documents

at issue; rather, documents are considered to be under a party’s control when that

party has the right, authority, or practical ability to obtain the documents . . . .”

Coventry Cap. US LLC v. EEA Life Settlements Inc., 333 F.R.D. 60, 64 (S.D.N.Y. 2019),

on reconsideration in part, 439 F. Supp. 3d 169 (S.D.N.Y. 2020) (quoting Bank of New

York v. Meridien BIAO Bank Tanzania Ltd., 171 F.R.D. 135, 146-47 (S.D.N.Y. 1997)).

For that reason, “if a party has access and the practical ability to possess

documents not available to the party seeking them, production may be required.”

Shcherbakovskiy v. Da Capo Al Fine, Ltd., 490 F.3d 130, 138 (2d Cir. 2007). Greer failed

to establish that she had neither access to, nor the practical ability to obtain, the

financial documents Mirlis sought.

      Finally, Greer failed to demonstrate that lesser sanctions short of entry of

default would have been enough to compel her compliance with the discovery

                                          12
requests. In light of the attorney’s fee award that she had already ignored, the

district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that Greer was unlikely to

respond to additional monetary penalties.

      For these reasons, we conclude that the district court did not abuse its

discretion in imposing a sanction of default in response to Greer’s sustained failure

to comply with discovery requests and orders from the court.

II.   Fraudulent Transfers

      Greer argues that, even if the district court did not abuse its discretion in

imposing default as a Rule 37(b) sanction, the default judgment should

nevertheless be vacated because Mirlis’s allegations do not establish as a matter of

law that Greer’s withdrawals from the joint accounts were fraudulent transfers by

a debtor under CUFTA or Connecticut common law.

      On a motion for default judgment after default has entered, “a court is

required to accept all of the [plaintiff’s] factual allegations as true and draw all

reasonable inferences in [the plaintiff’s] favor, but it is also required to determine

whether the [plaintiff’s] allegations establish [the defendant’s] liability as a matter

of law.” Finkel v. Romanowicz, 577 F.3d 79, 84 (2d Cir. 2009) (internal citations

omitted). We review the district court’s application of law on a motion for default

judgment without deference to the district court. Id.

                                          13
      CUFTA establishes various circumstances in which a “transfer . . . by a

debtor” is fraudulent as to a creditor whose claim arose before the transfer was

made. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 52-552e(a); see id. § 52-552e(a)(1) (intentional fraudulent

transfer made where debtor “inten[ded] to hinder, delay or defraud a creditor of

the debtor”); id. § 52-552f(a) (constructive fraudulent transfer made where debtor

did not receive “a reasonably equivalent value in exchange . . . and the debtor was

insolvent at that time or the debtor became insolvent as a result of the transfer”);

id. § 52-552e(a)(2) (constructive fraudulent transfer made where debtor did not

receive “a reasonably equivalent value in exchange . . . and the debtor (A) was

engaged or was about to engage in a business or transaction” in relation to which

the debtor’s remaining assets were “unreasonably small,” or “(B) intended to

incur, or believed or reasonably should have believed that [the debtor] would

incur, debts beyond [the debtor’s] ability to pay as they came due”). Under

Connecticut common law, which is largely coextensive with CUFTA as to

fraudulent transfers, a party alleging a fraudulent transfer must show “either: (1)

that the conveyance was made without substantial consideration and rendered the

transferor unable to meet [the transferor’s] obligations or (2) that the conveyance

was made with a fraudulent intent in which the grantee participated.” Certain

                                        14
Underwriters at Lloyd’s, London v. Cooperman, 289 Conn. 383, 394 (2008) (quoting

Bizzoco v. Chinitz, 193 Conn. 304, 312 (1984)).

       Under any legal theory, the existence of a “transfer . . . by a debtor” is an

essential element of a fraudulent transfer claim. Conn. Gen. Stat. §§ 52-552e(a), 52-

552f(a). “Debtor” is defined as “a person who is liable on a claim.” Id. § 52-552b(6).

The central question in this appeal is whether Greer’s independent withdrawals

of funds from the joint accounts qualify as “transfer[s] . . . by a debtor.”6 Id. §§ 52-

552e(a), 52-552f(a).

       Greer says no. She argues that the funds she withdrew from her joint

accounts with her husband were not transfers of her debtor husband’s property.

Greer points to Connecticut case law recognizing a rebuttable presumption that a

spouse’s deposit into a bank account held jointly with the other spouse is a gift.

See Trenchard v. Trenchard, 141 Conn. 627, 630 (Conn. 1954) (“[A] transfer from a

wife to a husband is presumed to be a gift.”); Wright v. Mallett, 94 Conn. App. 789,

792 (Conn. App. Ct. 2006) (noting that “[a] rebuttable presumption of donative

intent exists when the grantee is the natural object of the grantor’s bounty” and

6 Mirlis has not alleged that Greer made the withdrawals at her debtor husband’s direction. Cf.
Geriatrics, Inc. v. McGee, 332 Conn. 1, 11-24 (2019) (applying agency principles and holding that
“CUFTA’s requirement that the fraudulent transfer be ‘made by the debtor’ encompasses a
transfer made by a debtor’s attorney-in-fact”).

                                               15
that Connecticut courts “traditionally have recognized such a presumption

between husband and wife” (internal citation omitted)). In Greer’s view, her

debtor husband’s deposit of his funds into the joint accounts may have constituted

a “transfer,” but once the money was in the joint accounts, that money had been

gifted to her and her withdrawals cannot be viewed as fraudulent transfers by her

debtor husband.

      We disagree.     We predict that the Connecticut Supreme Court would

conclude that, even assuming Greer’s husband’s deposits into their joint accounts

were gifts from him to her, under the broad terms of CUFTA her withdrawals

nevertheless constitute “transfer[s] . . . by a debtor.” Conn. Gen. Stat. §§ 52-552e(a),

52-552f(a); see also Tom Rice Buick-Pontiac v. Gen. Motors Corp., 551 F.3d 149, 154 (2d

Cir. 2008) (explaining that, in the absence of authoritative law from a state’s

highest court, a federal court must predict how the state court would resolve the

state law question unless state law is so uncertain that the federal court can make

no reasonable prediction).

      Our conclusion relies primarily on two features of Connecticut law. First,

CUFTA’s broad definition of “transfer,” see Conn. Gen. Stat. § 52-552b(12), and

second, CUFTA’s provision that a transfer occurs, or is “perfected,” when the

debtor’s funds are no longer potentially subject to a lien in favor of the debtor’s

                                          16
judgment creditors, see id. § 52-552g(1)(B), which, in this case, would have occurred

at the moment the funds were withdrawn from the Greers’ joint accounts, see Fleet

Bank Connecticut, N.A. v. Carillo, 240 Conn. 343 (1997).

      Significantly, CUFTA broadly defines “transfer” as “every mode, direct or

indirect, absolute or conditional, voluntary or involuntary, of disposing of or

parting with an asset or an interest in an asset, and includes payment of money,

release, lease and creation of a lien or other encumbrance.” Conn. Gen. Stat. § 52-

552b(12) (emphasis added). The Connecticut Supreme Court’s decision in Canty

v. Otto is instructive as to the wide scope of this definition as applied to property

jointly owned by spouses. 304 Conn. 546 (2012). In that case, the court considered

a CUFTA claim by a creditor against the ex-wife of a debtor to recover funds

awarded to the ex-wife pursuant to an allegedly collusive divorce decree entered

after the claim against the debtor husband arose. Id. at 549-52. In concluding that

the dissolution decree distributing property to the debtor’s wife could qualify as a

“transfer” under CUFTA, the Supreme Court emphasized the broad definition of

“transfer” under the statute. See id. at 558. In particular, it explained, “the use of

the phrases ‘every mode’ and ‘voluntary or involuntary’ supports the conclusion

that the term transfer is defined very broadly under the act.” Id. The court also

noted that strong policy considerations supported that view: “in view of the

                                         17
overall policy of protecting creditors, it is unlikely that the legislature intended to

grant married couples a one-time-only opportunity to defraud creditors by

including the fraudulent transfer in a marital separation agreement.” Id. at 562

(internal quotation marks and alterations omitted) (quoting Mejia v. Reed, 31 Cal.

4th 657, 668 (Cal. 2003)).

      Moreover, CUFTA provides that a transfer is not completed until it “is so

far perfected that a creditor on a simple contract cannot acquire a judicial lien

otherwise than under [CUFTA] that is superior to the interest of the transferee.”

Conn. Gen. Stat. § 52-552g(1)(B). Thus, to the extent that the funds deposited by

Greer’s husband remained potentially subject to a lien by Greer’s husband’s

judgment creditors, his deposit of the funds did not complete any donative

“transfer” to Greer for purposes of CUFTA.

      Finally, under Connecticut law, the funds were subject to a lien in favor of

Greer’s husband’s judgment creditors until the time she withdrew them. See Fleet

Bank, 240 Conn. at 350-52.       In Fleet Bank, the Connecticut Supreme Court

considered whether a judgment creditor could enforce a statutory right to a bank

execution “against the entire balance of a joint bank account to which both a

judgment debtor and his nondebtor spouse ha[d] contributed funds.” Id. at 345.

The court held that each coholder of a joint account “has a sufficient property

                                          18
interest to permit a judgment creditor to exercise a bank execution” pursuant to

Connecticut’s bank execution statute. Id. at 352 (emphasis omitted) (citing Conn.

Gen. Stat. § 52-367b). The court explained that “a coholder’s property interest in

the joint account exposes that account, in its entirety, to the creditor’s collection

powers, in the absence of statutory or common law protections.” Id. (emphasis

added). Thus, even if Greer’s husband’s deposits constituted gifts to her, as she

argues, her withdrawals of those funds perfected the transfers by him and thus

constituted “transfer[s] . . . by a debtor” for purposes of CUFTA. Conn. Gen. Stat.

§§ 52-552e(a), 52-552f(a).

      Given these principles of Connecticut law, the record supports the district

court’s conclusion that the three withdrawals in question constituted fraudulent

transfers under CUFTA and Connecticut common law. Mirlis, 2021 WL 405886 at

*3-5. Indeed, although Greer’s husband did not himself withdraw funds from the

joint accounts and deposit them into Greer’s personal accounts, he set the transfers

in motion by depositing his funds into the joint accounts. We can reasonably

predict that, if the Connecticut Supreme Court were to reach this question, it

would hold that the text of CUFTA and the strong policy considerations

underlying it would support a broad reading of “transfer . . . by a debtor” that

would encompass the situation presented here—namely, a debtor’s funding of a

                                         19
joint account from which a spouse can withdraw funds without accountability to

the debtor’s creditors.

      As set forth above, the Liberty and Start accounts—which were funded

primarily or entirely by Greer’s debtor husband—were created after Greer’s

husband had notice of the claims against him. In addition, Mirlis alleged that

Greer’s husband transferred the funds to Greer “to avoid paying” his debt to Mirlis

and that the transfers “were made with the actual intent to hinder, delay or

defraud” Greer’s husband’s creditors. J. App’x 25 ¶ 49. These allegations are

supported by a host of factors identified in CUFTA as supporting an inference of

fraudulent intent, including the facts that, as the debtor’s spouse, Greer was an

“insider,” Conn. Gen. Stat. § 52-552b(7)(A)(i); her husband had been sued before

the transfers were perfected; and Greer did not provide consideration for the

money withdrawn. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 52-552e(b) (listing non-exclusive factors a

court may consider in determining whether a transfer was made with fraudulent

intent). Moreover, Greer testified that she transferred the funds from the Liberty

account “[b]ecause [she] did not want it taken.” J. App’x 427. These facts are

sufficient to establish Greer’s liability under CUFTA and Connecticut common law

for effectuating fraudulent transfers initiated by her debtor husband.

                                        20
      In sum, the district court did not err in concluding that Greer is liable for the

alleged fraudulent transfers as a matter of Connecticut law, and the district court

properly entered default judgment against her.

                                         ***

      For the reasons set forth above, we AFFIRM the district court’s judgment.

                                         21