Court Opinion

ID: 9644828
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:05:48.074611+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:07:32.817837
License: Public Domain

Weintraub, C. J.
(dissenting). The estate by the entirety is a remnant of other times. It rests upon the fiction of a oneness of husband and wife. Feither owns a separate, distinct interest in the fee; rather each and both as an entity own the entire interest. Feither takes anything by survivorship; there is nothing to pass because the survivor always had the entirety. To me the conception is quite incomprehensible. The inherent incongruity permeates the problem before us.
Presumably the estate by the entirety was designed to serve a social purpose favorable to the parties to the marriage. We are asked to recognize incidents more compatible with present thinking. Specifically, we are asked to subject a *414spouse’s interest in the fee to execution sale. I am not sure that I can identify just what is being sold. In theory there is no right of survivorship; nothing accrues on death. And during coverture neither spouse has a separate interest in the fee. Whatever the nature of the “fee” interest a purchaser receives, he can do nothing with it except wait and hope. What he buys is the chance that the non-debtor spouse will expire before the judgment debtor.
I do not seriously urge such academic difficulties; indeed, one cannot confidently make deductions from a premise that is fictional. My objection is a practical one, to wit, that so long as we adhere to the concept of an estate by the entirety, an execution sale will result in the sacrifice of economic interests. Since the purchaser at the sale does not acquire a one-half interest in the fee with a right to partition the fee, the execution sale can be but a gambling event, yielding virtually nothing to the debtor, or for that matter to the creditor either unless he is the successful wagerer at the sale and in the waiting game to follow.
I concede that earlier decisions recognizing a right to sell the life interest of the debtor presented the same problem in theory, but the practical consequences were negligible. I think it has been the general experience of the bar that judgments obtained against a spouse have not been followed by execution sales of the life interest. And in bankruptcy proceedings the interest of the debtor regularly has been sold for a nominal sum to the other spouse or a representative of both. The general assumption, I believe, has been that the fee was not involved; and the life interest for one reason or another was not regarded by outsiders as sufficiently attractive. But if the purchaser at an execution or bankruptcy sale may one day reap the harvest of a full title, there will be an invitation to speculators.
If public policy demands that a creditor’s interest be respected (I have no quarrel with the thought), the basis should be just to both the creditor and the debtor. It cannot be unless what is offered for sale is a non-contingent, non-*415speculative one-half interest -which would support a partition suit. In that setting, bidders would know what is being sold and the sale could yield a fair price. An equitable solution can be achieved only by a statute abolishing the estate by the entirety in favor of a joint tenancy, or at least entitling the purchaser at an involuntary sale to have partition. In my judgment, a half-way approach will prove unjust. It will appreciably turn against the husband and wife a fictional concept that doubtless was originated for their benefit.
It should be noted that R. S. 46:3-7 forbids execution sales of the contingent interests there described. The majority hold the interest of a spouse in the fee is “vested.” I find it difficult, again in abstract thought, to determine what part of the fee can be said to be “vested” in one spouse at the time of the sale. But realistically it would seem accurate to recognize that the so-called “right of survivor-ship” is 'quite contingent, and whether it is within the statute or not, still it would serve the same policy to keep it from the auction block.
The impact upon the free movement of property in the marketplace may also be noted. In effect, the purchaser at the involuntary sale becomes a member of the entity for title purposes. In the hands of a husband and wife, property will be sold when the common economic interests of the family will be furthered. But when the power to alienate the whole is divided between a spouse and a stranger with unrelated economic motivations, property will not be moved unless those diverse interests can come to terms. Neither can compel a sale. In practical effect, there is a new restraint upon alienability to the disservice of the public interest.
I accordingly vote to affirm.