First Nat. Bank of Leesburg v. Hector Supply Co.

• Decision Date: 27 October 1971
• Docket Number: No. 39814,39814
• Citation: 254 So.2d 777
• Parties: FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF LEESBURG, Petitioner, v. HECTOR SUPPLY COMPANY, a Florida corporation, et al., Respondents.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

Page 777

254 So.2d 777

FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF LEESBURG, Petitioner, v. HECTOR SUPPLY COMPANY, a Florida corporation, et al., Respondents.

No. 39814.

Supreme Court of Florida.

Oct. 27, 1971.

Rehearing Denied Dec. 8, 1971.

John F. Cherry and Robert E. Austin, Jr., of Davis, McLin, Burnsed & Austin, Leesburg, for petitioner.

Herbert Stettin, of Feibelman, Friedman, Hyman & Britton, Miami, for respondents.

CARLTON, Justice:

The District Court of Appeal, Third District, has certified that its opinion in this cause, reported at 236 So.2d 240 (3rd D.C.A.Fla.1970), passes upon this question of great public interest: Whether a joint checking account, maintained by a husband and wife, may be garnisheed for payment of the husband's judgment debt? Certiorari was granted upon application of the petitioners. Article V, Section 4(2), Florida Constitution, F.S.A. Through our decision today, we quash the District Court's opinion holding that a joint account allowing for individual withdrawal may not be held as an estate by the entireties, and we remand this cause for further proceedings, so that the intent of the spouses may be established.

Prior to the dispute which resulted in this litigation, respondent, Hector Supply Company, was asked to sell materials on credit to Mr. E. P. Rohrer and Noah Peterson, doing business as Rohrer-Peterson, a partnership. In the course of determining the credit standing of the partners, Hector Supply was informed by petitioner, First National Bank of Leesburg, that Noah Peterson held a joint checking account with his wife, Mayre Lou Peterson, in petitioner's bank. Hector extended the requested credit, but in time the partnership foundered and Hector was forced to obtain a final money judgment against Rohrer and Peterson jointly and severally.

As judgment creditor, Hector Supply brought garnishment proceedings against the Bank, as garnishee, for collection against the account held by Peterson and his wife. The Bank responded with the assertion that the account was held jointly by the Petersons as a tenancy by the entireties; therefore, it was not subject to the individual debts of Noah Peterson. Affidavits were filed by the Petersons, stating that they intended that the account be held as entireties property. Nonetheless, the Civil Court of Record granted Hector Supply's Motion for Summary Final Judgment, stating only that the court was of the opinion, '(T)hat the bank account maintained by the defendant NOAH PETERSON at the FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF LEESBURG is not held by him as an estate by the entireties with his wife MAYRE LOU PETERSON * * *.'

On appeal, the District Court affirmed, basing its decision upon the wording of the signature card forming the contract between the Petersons and the Bank. This card identified the Petersons as owning all funds in the account jointly, with a right of survivorship. The account was established in the name of 'Noah or Mrs. Mayre Lou Peterson,' and the funds were to be disbursed by checks drafted by either of them; additionally, according to the card, the Petersons exchanged mutual powers of attorney, recognizing in each the power to make deposits and drafts on behalf of both. The District Court held that the account was inconsistent with an estate by the entireties, saying:

'Since either of the joint depositors have the power to alienate the account by closing it out, and can achieve this alienation individually and without consent of the other, we cannot construe this particular type of personalty as an estate by the entireties.' 236 So.2d at 205, 206.

In reaching its decision the District Court cited for precedential support the following footnote appearing in a relatively recent decision of this Court, Glasser v. Columbia Fed. Sav. & Loan Ass'n, 197 So.2d 6 (Fla.1967), at page 7:

'7. It seems clear that the right of a spouse to make a transfer of funds from a checking account held as an estate by entirety upon one signature is based upon express delegation of such agency in the creation of the account. Hagerty v. Hagerty, Fla.1951, 52 So.2d 432. This case in fact involved only survivorship and not alienability. Cf. Rader v. First Nat'l Bank in Palm Beach, Fla.1949, 42 So.2d 1. Whether the existence of an individual power of alienation is inherently incompatible with this estate, which by definition is individually inalienable, is not treated at length in the opinions. The argument is quite strong for the conclusion that, at least as to property transferable by delivery of possession alone, the estate cannot exist because of incompatibility with the entireties' doctrine. Holman v. Mays, 1936, 154 Or. 241, 59 P.2d 392, 395. Disposition of the point, however, is not essential in the case now presented.'

We do not agree that the arrangement for individual withdrawal defeated the form of the Peterson's account as an estate by the entireties as a matter of law. Although this issue has been discussed in our previous cases of Hagerty v. Hagerty, 52 So.2d 432 (Fla.1951); In re Lyons' Estate, 90 So.2d 39 (Fla.1956), and Winters v. Parks, 91 So.2d 649 (Fla.1956), we base our judgment today upon a reexamination of the doctrines supporting the tenancy of the entirety in bank accounts.

Our first observation is that a valid argument can be advanced for the proposition that the tenancy by the entirety in personalty was unknown to the common law. Neither Blackstone nor Kent, in their respective commentaries, suggest that personalty could be held by the entireties. Halsbury in 16 Laws of England 534 et seq. states that under the common law prior to an 1883 emancipation act, a gift or limitation of personalty to husband and wife vested the entire interest in the husband alone, in both law and equity. And we find this in Bishop, I Law of Married Women 140, § 211:

'If real estate is conveyed by a deed to a husband and his wife, this creates in them a peculiar kind of tenancy, known as a tenancy by the entirety * * *. Nothing of this sort is known in respect of personal property. Since the wife cannot own personal property in her possession in her own right, but whatever title she has in such property vests in the husband, if a chattel is given or sold to the husband and wife jointly the title passes wholly to him.'

This Court recognized in Dollner v. Snow, 16 Fla. 86 (1877) that under the common law the husband became outright owner of his wife's personal property. And in a dissent in Sanderson v. Jones, 6 Fla. 430 (1855) at 476, 477, Mr. Justice Dupon recorded that a joint tenancy in personalty could not exist, '(F) or this very simple reason, based upon a canon of common law, that the husband jure moriti is entitled to all the personal estate of the wife * * *.'

Nonetheless, it appears that a tenancy by the entirety in personalty was recognized prior to 1776 in certain cases involving mortgages (Coppin Case, 2 P.Wms. 496, 24 Eng. Reprint 832 (1728)), bequests (Atcheson v. Atcheson, 11 Beav. 485, 50 Eng. Reprint 905 ( )), and money lent (Christ's Hospital v. Budgin, 2 Vern. 683 (1712)). One could fairly say that the entireties theory was applied to personalty in instances where equity chose to support the wife lest she be unjustly deprived of her personal property, or in instances where profits and moneys derived from land held by the entireties was transformed into choses in action.

The issue of the doctrine's existence was directly presented to us in Bailey v. Smith, 89 Fla. 303, 103 So. 833 (1925). It was our judgment that those cases featuring the tenancy by the entirety in personalty sufficiently proved the existence of the doctrine so as to warrant inclusion of it in our jurisprudence. We adhere to this decision today.

Having recognized the doctrine as extant under the common law adopted by this State through Fla.Stat. § 2.01, F.S.A. and its predecessors, we now consider whether or not constitutional or statutory provisions have abated or altered the doctrine. The historic basis for the tenancy was the assumed incapacity of married women to hold property individually. In this century, as well as in the last, successive constitutional and statutory changes have ground this assumption to naught. Although in Fairchild v. Knight, 18 Fla. 770 (1882); English v. English, 66 Fla. 427, 63 So. 822 (1913), and Dodson v. National Title Ins. Co., 159 Fla. 371, 31 So.2d 402 (1947), we were prepared to say that the common law had not been abrogated, because the assumed incapacity of married women continued to survive legislative assault, we could not reach this result today if incapacity remained as the foundation stone of the doctrine. The reason for this is that with the adoption of Article X, § 5, Florida Constitution of 1968, all distinctions between married men and women have been expressly abolished.

Because of the adoption of this Constitutional provision, we requested reargument of this cause so that attention could be directed specifically to this point. It is our opinion that this provision does not abolish the tenancy. Whether or not incapacity was the supporting theory behind the tenancy as of 1776, subsequent reconsideration of doctrine has led to development of the view that it ought to be based upon the intention of the parties, rather than upon any assumed incapacity of married women; and further, that concurrently, it ought to be based upon the simple fact that those who were married were to be considered as a unit with both taking Per tout et non per my, and with neither taking as a separate individual. Thus, in English v. English, Supra, at 66 Fla. 430, 431, 63 So. 823, we quoted with approval the following excerpt from 15 Amer. & Eng.Ency. of Law (2nd ed.) 847:

'Though the modern tendency is to regard the creation of an estate by the entireties as resting, not upon a rule of law arising from the supposed incapacity of husband and wife to hold in moities, but upon a rule of construction based on the presumption of intention, it may be...