Court Opinion

ID: 9549943
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:26:48.064232+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:21:04.643776
License: Public Domain

FIDEL, Judge, specially
concurring:
I join in the lead opinion, but write separately to address the continuing validity of First Interstate Bank v. Tatum and Bell Center Assoc., 170 Ariz. 99, 821 P.2d 1384 (App.1991). This court held in Tatum and Bell that a loan guaranty signed by members of a partnership does not bind the marital communities of the signing partners in the absence of the signatures of their spouses. Id. at 104, 821 P.2d at 1389. We reached this holding by application of section 25-214(C), which provides:
Either spouse separately may acquire, manage, control or dispose of community property, or bind the community, except that joinder of both spouses is required in any of the following cases:
1. Any transaction for the acquisition, disposition or encumbrance of an interest in real property other than an unpatented mining claim or a lease of less than one year.
2. Any transaction of guaranty, indemnity or suretyship.
Our Tatum and Bell opinion concerned only subsection (C)(2) of this statute. By contrast, our opinion in Chase Bank v. Acosta, 179 Ariz. 563, 880 P.2d 1109 (App.1994), concerned only subsection (C)(1).5 In Acosta we held that subsection (C)(1) does not foreclose recourse to the marital community of a general partner for the deficiency on a note securing the partnership’s acquisition of real property. Id. at 571-73, 880 P.2d at 1117-19.
I agree with the holding of Acosta and its application in this case. I do not, however, endorse those portions of Acosta that unnecessarily question the validity of Tatum and Bell. See id. at 573, 880 P.2d at 1119, see also id. at 575-76, 880 P.2d at 1121-22 (Weis-berg, J., concurring). There is in fact no inconsistency between our holding in Tatum and Bell, properly understood, and the majority holding in Acosta.
The distinguishing, and reconciling, factor is a principle that we recognize and apply in both Acosta and this decision: A partner’s marital community has no interest in any specific item of property that the partnership owns. Though the partnership may own or trade in real property, the community has no real property interest in such property, but only a personal property interest in the partnership assets as a whole. See A.R.S. § 29-226 (“A partner’s interest in the partnership is his share of the profits and surplus, and the same is personal property.”). It follows that a partner-spouse who engages in a “transaction for the acquisition, disposition or encumbrance of an interest in [partnership] real property,” (paraphrasing § 25-214(C)(1)) has not, to any degree, engaged in a “transaction for the acquisition, disposition or encumbrance of [community] real property.” Because the purpose of 25-214(C)(l) is to prevent unilateral dissipation of community real property, not community personal property, the restrictions of subsection (C)(1) *191do not apply. Acosta, 179 Ariz. at 572-73, 880 P.2d at 1118-19.
The transformation of partnership real property into community personal property has no bearing, however, on the statutory restriction on unilateral spousal guaranties. Partnership real property may be community personal property, but a guaranty is a guaranty. When a partner-spouse signs a partnership guaranty, he has engaged in a “transaction of guaranty, indemnity or sure-tyship.” A.R.S. § 25-214(0(2). And the statutory purpose—to preclude one spouse from unilaterally binding the community to a guaranty—is no less implicated when the unilateral signator undertakes to guarantee partnership debt than when he undertakes to guarantee debt of another form.
Because this case, like Acosta, concerns only subsection (C)(1), the real property provision, not subsection (C)(2), the guaranty provision, my colleagues find it unnecessary to compare and reconcile Acosta and Tatum and Bell. However, because the cases are readily reconciled by marking the distinction between real property transactions and guaranties, I add these words to highlight the distinction and lift any shadow cast by Acosta over our narrow application of subsection (C)(2) in Tatum and Bell.

. The Acosta court expressly declined to “analyze this issue from the standpoint of A.R.S. § 25-214(C)(2) (the 'guaranty' exception).” Id. at 571, 880 P.2d at 1117.