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638 F.2d 14

Docket No. 80-1589.

Greenblatt v. Ford

Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals

Argued Dec. 2, 1980. Decided Jan. 9, 1981.

Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals · decided 1981-01-09

2 counsel of record

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“The trustee contends that the filing of the petition acts as an immediate severance of the estate by the entireties since the debtor’s interest passes immediately to the trustee thereby severing the time honored unities of time, title, identity of interest, and possession, necessary to preserve the estate by the entireties. The court disagrees. The legislative history consistently takes the position, ultimately enacted in § 541(a)(1), that it is the debtor’s undivided interest in tenants by the entireties property which becomes property of the estate. There is no severance of the unities when the debtor’s interest passes to the estate. The trustee merely obtains and retains custody of the debtor’s undivided interest consisting of the same unities, intact and unaltered, as they existed immediately prior to the filing of the petition, until such time as that interest, still intact and unaltered, is exempted from the estate under § 522(b)(2)(B) ... For all of the above reasons, the court concludes that the debtor’s undivided interest in property which he held immediately before the commencement of the case as a tenant by the entirety with his nonbankrupt spouse, as that tenancy is presently constituted under Maryland law is property of the estate in bankruptcy under the Code, that the interest is subject to administration under § 541(a)(1), and that the tenancy by the entirety is not severed by the filing of a petition under the Code.”

quoted by 2 later decisions, including In Re Benner, Durnal v. Borg-Warner Acceptance Corp. (In Re DeMarco)

“[s]ince the debtor's interest in entireties property is exempt from process by both his individual and joint creditors under Maryland law, the debtor's interest in property which he holds as a tenant by the entirety may be exempted from the estate by Mr. Ford under Sec. 522(b)(2)(B).”

quoted by 2 later decisions, including In Re Sumy, Sumy v. Schlossberg

Relies on In Re Ford

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Opinion by Per Curiam · Decided 1981-01-09

How this case has been cited

Cited by 128 later decisions — most recently August 2017 · most notably Napotnik v. Equibank and Parkvale Savings Association, Sumy v. Schlossberg (1985)

16 federal appellate · 9 district ·

7601981199020002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Charles M. Tatelbaum, Gary Greenblatt, Baltimore, Md. (Edmund A. Goldberg, Sherbow, Shea & Tatelbaum, P. A., Baltimore, Md., on brief), for appellant.

Shale D. Stiller, Baltimore, Md. (Irving E. Walker, Frank, Bernstein, Conaway & Goldman, Baltimore, Md., L. Stephen Hess, Baltimore, Md., on brief), for appellee.

Before WINTER, SPROUSE and ERVIN, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

¶1

The trustee in a bankruptcy proceeding brought under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978, 11 U.S.C. §§ 101-1330, appeals from a decision of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Maryland, sitting in banc. In a thorough and detailed opinion, the Bankruptcy Court held that the filing of a bankruptcy petition solely by the husband does not sever the estate of tenancy by the entirety in either real or personal property held as such by the debtor and his wife under Maryland law, that the debtor's interest in entireties property is property of the bankruptcy estate under 11 U.S.C. § 541(a)(1), but that the interest may be exempted by the debtor from property of the estate pursuant to 11 U.S.C. § 522(b)(2)(B).

¶2

In this appeal, the trustee challenges the first and third of these holdings. On the severance issue, he argues that the filing of a bankruptcy petition disturbs the unities of time, title, identity of interest, and possession necessary to preserve the entireties estate, thus creating a tenancy in common. He also contends that the debtor may not invoke § 522(b)(2)(B) because the debtor's interest is not "exempt from process" under Maryland law.

¶3

We reject these contentions. Having considered the briefs and arguments of counsel before this court, we affirm on the opinion of the Bankruptcy Court. In re Levy Ford, Jr., 3 B.R. 559 (Bkrtcy.D.Md.1980).*

¶4

AFFIRMED.

*

Although he did not take a cross appeal, the debtor urges on us that the Bankruptcy Court was in error in holding that his interest in property held by him and his wife as tenants by the entireties became part of the bankrupt estate. We reject this argument also for the reasons assigned by the Bankruptcy Court

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