Court Opinion

ID: 9759216
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 00:08:53.516378+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:00.128392
License: Public Domain

McEWEN, Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the result. I do so even though I find it most difficult to accept the determination that the regular routine *358deposit of salary and bonuses by a husband, into a household checking account owned by himself and his wife as tenants by the entireties, is a conveyance of individual property in fraud of creditors—even where, as here, the creditor is a predecessor tenant of one of the tenant owners of the entireties account. The majority opinion of our colleague, the venerable Judge J. Sydney Hoffman, provides the following recitation of the pertinent facts:
The record reveals the following:
Appellant and Mr. Stinner married and opened a joint checking account in 1978. They jointly own a 1973 Cadillac and a $62,000 home that is subject to a mortgage having an outstanding balance of $47,000. Mr. Stinner individually owes approximately $54,000 to various creditors and nearly $8,700 to appellee. He is employed by Bethlehem Steel Corporation and receives a net annual salary of $61,338. His paychecks and all bonuses are directly deposited to the joint account. He maintains no investments, owns no valuable paintings, and has no other significant assets. The subject account is used to pay household expenses, Mr. Stinner’s loans, and his children’s college tuition. Appellant is a full-time homemaker, who has occasionally deposited personal funds in the joint account. Appellant generally maintains the account, writing almost ninety per cent of the checks. In addition to Mr. Stinner’s direct deposits and appellant’s sporadic deposits, they deposited their joint tax refund check and the proceeds of a $5,000 joint loan in the account. From this evidence, the lower court concluded that Mr. Stinner conveyed his salary into the joint account by direct deposit and that he was insolvent at the time. We are bound by those findings.
These facts do not portray a conveyance in fraud of creditors. In fact, it would be difficult to invent a more compelling factual basis for a decision that this entireties account should be unavailable to any creditor of either tenant.
*359Our eminent colleague Judge Gwilym A. Price, in his very careful and deliberate opinion in Patterson v. Hopkins, 247 Pa.Super. 163, 371 A.2d 1378 (1977), addressed this very issue of the garnishment of a checking account funded by the salary of the debtor-tenant. That decision is controlling and it is for that reason that I concur.
I deem it further advisable to express my view with regard to that portion of the opinion of the majority that restricts the garnishment by appellee of the subject account to the sum of $4,200. I join in the view of the majority opinion that the oral stipulation in open court that had received the imprimatur of the trial judge binds the parties and restricts the judge to a finding that is consistent with the stipulation. I wish to emphasize that the garnishment should be restricted to the sum of $4,200 for a further reason, namely, the said sum is the amount of the particular salary payment of the debtor-tenant. Our courts must provide careful scrutiny of the facts and employ extreme care when permitting entireties property to be available for execution to creditors of one of the tenants and, in this instance, the garnishment is limited to but a portion of the garnished account.
I concur in the result.