Shearer v. Titus (In Re Titus)
Opinion
When his old law firm broke its lease, attorney Paul Titus was on the hook for millions of dollars in unpaid commercial rent. The landlord tried to recover the rent by targeting the wages Mr. Titus was earning at his new firm. But Mr. Titus's wages never passed through his hands alone; instead, they were deposited by his new firm directly into a bank account owned by both Mr. Titus and his wife as tenants by the entireties.
Eventually, Mr. Titus was forced into bankruptcy and the landlord's claim became a claim of the bankruptcy trustee. Now, after two trials in the Bankruptcy Court and two appeals to the District Court, we reach three conclusions. First, Mr. and Mrs. Titus are liable for a fraudulent transfer. When the wages of an insolvent spouse are deposited into a couple's entireties account, both spouses are fraudulent transferees. Second, as for the precise measure of the Tituses' liability, the bankruptcy trustee waived any challenge to the method used by previous courts to calculate fraudulent-transfer liability. Going forward, however, we clarify how future courts should measure liability when faced with an entireties account like the Tituses' - an account into which deposits consist of both (fraudulent) wages and (non-fraudulent) other sources, and from which cash is spent on both (permissible) household necessities and (impermissible) other expenditures. 1 Until now, a trustee somehow had to show that wage deposits were impermissibly spent on non-necessary expenditures, even though wage and nonwage deposits had become commingled in the account. Rather than expect a trustee to trace the untraceable, future courts should generally presume that wage deposits were spent on non-necessary expenditures in proportion to the overall share of wages in the account as a whole. Third, in evaluating the Bankruptcy Court's application of the method in play at the time of its decision, we perceive no clear error. Thus we affirm.
I. Background
A. Facts
In 1999, the Pittsburgh law firm of Titus & McConomy dissolved. One of the firm's named partners, Paul Titus, joined another firm, Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP. The Schnader firm began depositing Mr. Titus's wages into a bank account he owned jointly with his wife.
Evidently the dissolved Titus firm had walked away from its commercial lease. To recover rent that had gone unpaid since the dissolution, the landlord brought a breach-of-contract suit against the former partners of the Titus firm and ultimately secured a multimillion dollar judgment against the partners, including Mr. Titus.
Armed with the breach-of-contract judgment, the landlord set its sights on the wages that Mr. Titus's new employer, the Schnader firm, was depositing into the Tituses' bank account. It brought a fraudulent-transfer action in Pennsylvania state court against Mr. and Mrs. Titus. This triggered an involuntary bankruptcy against Mr. Titus. Thus the landlord's fraudulent-transfer claim became a claim of the bankruptcy trustee in the Bankruptcy Court. 2
B. Procedural History in Bankruptcy
After a first trial, the Bankruptcy Court concluded that the direct deposit of wages into the Tituses' bank account was a fraudulent transfer that the trustee could recover from either Mr. or Mrs. Titus, who jointly owned the account as tenants by the entireties. As for the measure of liability, Mr. and Mrs. Titus were liable for the amount of Mr. Titus's wages that were "not spent on necessities."
In re Titus
(
Titus I
),
On appeal, the District Court affirmed that the wage deposits were a fraudulent transfer. It remanded for a new trial, however, to give the Tituses a second chance to identify both the source of certain "unexplained deposits" into the bank account and the destination of certain "unknown expenditures" from the account.
Titus v. Shearer
(
Titus II
),
After a second trial, the Bankruptcy Court made the following findings as to deposits into, and expenditures from, the bank account:
See
In re Titus
(
Titus III
),
Using the figures set out above, the Bankruptcy Court went about calculating the Tituses' liability. But the Court immediately hit a roadblock: Because money is fungible and wage and nonwage deposits commingled in the account, it was impossible to determine whether a dollar of wages was eventually spent on a permissible "necessity" or an impermissible "non-necessity."
As a result, the Court had to calculate liability indirectly.
It did so using what it could measure: nonwage deposits and non-necessity spending, which are represented below the dotted line in the chart. The Court's underlying assumption was that all explained, nonwage sources of cash in the account (both explained nonwage deposits and cash already in the account) were spent on non-necessities before any wage deposits were impermissibly spent on whatever non-necessities remained. Thus the Tituses' total liability was:
(Non-Necessities) - (Explained Nonwages) - (Initial Balance)
= $1,000,133.51 - $634,998.83 - $91,272.00
= $273,862.68.
The District Court affirmed. Neither side is fully satisfied with various rulings of the Bankruptcy and District Courts, and both have appealed.
II. Jurisdiction and Standard of Review
The District Court had jurisdiction to review the final order of the Bankruptcy Court under
III. Discussion
After two trials in the Bankruptcy Court, two appeals to the District Court, and four rounds of briefing in our Court, there are three issues for our review:
(1) Are the Tituses liable for a fraudulent transfer?
(2) Did the trustee waive any challenge to the method used to calculate the Tituses' liability?
(3) Did the Bankruptcy Court clearly err in applying the method it used?
We include an additional area of discussion on the second issue. Even if the trustee waived its challenge to the calculation method, should future courts measure liability for commingled accounts differently?
A. Threshold Fraudulent-Transfer Liability
The bankruptcy trustee "may avoid any transfer of an interest of the debtor in property" if the transfer "is voidable under applicable law by a creditor."
We reach three conclusions on the threshold question of the Tituses' fraudulent-transfer liability. First, the wage deposits into the Tituses' entireties account were a "transfer" under the PUFTA. Second, Mrs. Titus is personally subject to PUFTA liability as an entireties tenant.
Third, Mr. Titus is subject to transferee liability even though he is the debtor-transferor as well. As a result, the wage deposits constituted a fraudulent transfer that the bankruptcy trustee could avoid.
1. The wage deposits constituted a "transfer."
"[T]he direct deposit of wages into an entireties account is a 'transfer' of an 'asset' under the PUFTA." Wettach , 811 F.3d at 115. This statement settles the question whether the wage deposits from the Schnader firm into the Tituses' entireties account were a transfer.
The reasoning behind this conclusion is as follows. On a macro level, Mr. Titus's wages (i) began as his "asset" for purposes of the PUFTA and (ii) were not his "asset" once they were in the entireties account. Id at 114-15 . That change in status is deemed a "transfer." Id. at 115.
As to the first point, Mr. Titus "exercised control over where his employer deposited his wages."
See
id.
at 114. This control overrode Pennsylvania's baseline rule that "wages" are exempt from creditors "while in the hands of the employer."
As to the second point, the wages ceased being an "asset" of Mr. Titus once they were in the entireties account. The definition of "asset" under the PUFTA excludes property held in a tenancy by the entireties "to the extent it is not subject to process by a creditor holding a claim against only one tenant."
Putting these points together, Mr. Titus started with an "asset" and later relinquished it to the entireties account. This maneuver meets the PUFTA's definition of "transfer" as an "indirect ... disposing of or parting with an asset or an interest in an asset."
2. Mrs. Titus is a transferee subject to PUFTA liability.
Even assuming that the wage deposits were a "transfer" under the PUFTA, Mrs. Titus has a further objection of her own - that her status as a co-tenant by the entireties cannot open her up to personal liability for wages deposited by her insolvent husband into their joint account.
Case law prevents this position's success. "[W]hen a spouse conveys individual property to a tenancy by the entireties in fraud of creditors, the creditor may nevertheless execute against the property so conveyed."
Garden State
,
Meinen
,
In doing so, courts have acknowledged the point that Mrs. Titus urges here - that this liability rule leads to a harsh result.
See, e.g.
,
Stinner
,
3. Mr. Titus is subject to PUFTA transferee liability even though he is the debtor-transferor as well.
Mr. Titus is both transferor and transferee. As an individual debtor-transferor, he is subject to liability under the landlord's claim for breach of the lease agreement. As a transferee, he has fraudulent-transfer liability as a tenant of the entireties account. In sum, his different capacities make him liable in different ways. His argument that he cannot be both transferor and transferee therefore fails.
Nor is there a risk of double recovery - that is, one recovery from Mr. Titus as an individual debtor and another from him as an entireties tenant. Once the trustee secures a recovery from one source, he will not have recourse against the other source.
Cf.
In re Integra Realty Res., Inc.
,
B. Method for Calculating PUFTA Liability
Having concluded that Mr. and Mrs. Titus can be individually liable for a fraudulent transfer of Mr. Titus's wages, we reach the question of how to measure that liability. We begin with the baseline rule that a transfer is not "fraudulent" under the PUFTA if the wages deposited into the entireties account are "used to pay for reasonable and necessary household expenses."
Wettach
, 811 F.3d at 105 (quotations omitted) (discussing
Between the two trials in this case, we clarified the burdens in a PUFTA action. First, our Court presumes that "funds deposited into an entireties account were not in exchange for reasonably equivalent value." Wettach , 811 F.3d at 111. In our case, this means we presume that the wages in question were not spent on necessities.
See id. Second, the Tituses may rebut that presumption by producing "some evidence as to uses of funds in the entireties account." Id. at 109 (quotations omitted). Imposing this burden of production on the Tituses "serves an information-forcing purpose" by requiring them "to come forward with information" about "how they used funds transferred into [the] entireties account." Id. Third, once the Tituses have met their burden of production, the trustee bears the burden of persuasion "as to all elements of a constructive fraudulent-transfer claim under the PUFTA." Id. at 107. Among other things, the trustee must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that wage deposits were not spent on necessities.
But the trustee is faced with what appears to be an impossible task in a commingled account, circumstances that did not exist in other cases before us. Because money is fungible, and funds from multiple sources commingle in the entireties account, "it may be impossible to determine what deposit was used for a particular expenditure."
In re Wettach
,
No wonder, then, that the trustee here could not carry his burden of persuasion. For example, in the first trial in this case, the Bankruptcy Court explained that it was "at least as likely as not" that a given dollar of deposits went toward necessity spending as toward non-necessity spending.
Titus I
,
Faced with this commingling problem, every court to encounter the issue has adopted a baseline assumption: All explained nonwage deposits were spent on non-necessities before any wage deposits were spent on non-necessities.
E.g.
,
Titus v. Shearer
(
Titus IV
), No. AP 10-2338,
Liability = (Non-Necessity Spending) - (Nonwage Deposits) .
In this case, the trustee waived any challenge to the selection of this method and formula. An issue is waived on remand if it was "not raised in a party's prior appeal."
Skretvedt v. E.I. DuPont De Nemours
,
Before doing so, however, we set out a different way to calculate liability for future courts facing commingled funds: the pro rata approach. Under this approach, we presume, absent other evidence, that spending out of the entireties account was made up of a mixture of wage and nonwage deposits in proportion to the overall ratio of wage to nonwage deposits in the account. As we explain below, this approach addresses practically the commingling of fungible funds in the account and is not foreclosed by precedent in our Circuit.
1. The pro rata approach accounts practically for the commingling of fungible funds.
As noted, the first Bankruptcy Court in this case stated that it was "at least as likely as not" that a dollar of nonwage deposits funded non-necessity spending, and that the trustee had therefore failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that wage deposits impermissibly funded non-necessities.
See
Titus I
,
The pro rata approach accounts for the fungibility of wage and nonwage funds that are commingled in the entireties account. In our case, the liability would be calculated based on the inflows and outflows found by the second Bankruptcy Court decision (for simplicity, and to be consistent with our conclusion in the next section, we have eliminated "unexplained" nonwage deposits):
Titus III
,
Total Inflows = (Wages) + (Nonwages) + (Preexisting Cash)
= ($1,125,255.58) + ($634,998.83) + ($91,272)
= $1,851,526.41.
Thus the calculation of wage deposits as a percentage of total inflows is:
(Wage Deposits) / (Total Inflows)
= ($1,125,255.58) / ($1,851,526.41)
= 60.8%.
Hence we can presume that, of the $1,000,133.51 spent on non-necessities, 60.8% impermissibly came from wage deposits. The Tituses' liability would be that wage-derived portion:
(0.608) * ($1,000,133.51) = $607,825.96.
Eyeballing these figures, we note that this measure of liability makes intuitive sense: Wages account for just under two-thirds of all deposits into the account, so it stands to reason that just under two-thirds of all non-necessity spending came from wage deposits. Appropriately, then, the Tituses' liability under the pro rata approach would be just under two-thirds of all non-necessity spending.
We add one further note on the mechanics of the pro rata approach. We alluded earlier to "unusual circumstances" that could overcome the default presumption that spending out of the entireties account is made up of a mixture of wage and nonwage dollars in proportion to the overall ratio of wage to nonwage deposits into the account. See supra p. 303. Recall that the pro rata approach rests on our observation that a trustee should not be asked to trace the untraceable. It follows that the presumption would yield where a factfinder could trace the (ordinarily) untraceable - in other words, where the factfinder could track a dollar from a given category of deposits into a given category of spending.
Say, for instance, that a trial court could trace X dollars of nonwage deposits into an account to X dollars of non-necessity spending from the account. (An example might be monies placed into the account from a bequest requiring its spending on what is not necessary.) Before performing the pro rata calculation for the rest of the cash inflows and outflows, the trial court would reduce both its nonwage deposit figure and its non-necessity spending figure by X . The result of this reduction in nonwage deposits (while wage deposits remain constant) would be a greater percentage share of all deposits into the account coming from wages. This greater percentage share would then be applied to the reduced amount of total non-necessity spending.
In sum, the trial court should trace whatever is traceable before using the pro rata approach to proportionally derive the untraceable flows. We leave to the trial court's discretion the threshold decision whether it is able to trace the ordinarily untraceable.
2. The pro rata approach is not foreclosed by precedent in our Circuit.
The only possible precedent of this Court,
Wettach
,
produced no evidence to demonstrate how they spent the wages deposited into the entireties account. The bankruptcy court even offered them a "dollar-for- dollar reduction against any liability" for other deposits into the account .... Having failed to carry their burden of production and absent clear error by the bankruptcy court, the Wettachs have no claim for relief on appeal.
Wettach
,
For three reasons, however, this statement in Wettach does not mandate the Non-Necessities Approach for accounts that commingle wage and nonwage deposits.
First, the passage is not a ringing endorsement of the approach. We merely noted that the Bankruptcy Court "even offered" the Wettachs another potential offset. The statement is hardly a holding.
Second, even if the statement were taken as a holding,
Wettach
is distinguishable. It confronted a mixture of deposits much simpler than those facing us here: The Wettachs had produced "no evidence of any 'other deposits.' "
See
Titus III
,
Third, even the
Wettach
Bankruptcy Court expressed "some reservations" about the dollar-for-dollar offset dictated by the Non-Necessities Approach.
Wettach
,
* * *
In sum, the trustee missed his chance to challenge the use of the Non-Necessities Approach in the first appeal to the District Court. Hence his objection to the method for measuring liability has been waived. Going forward, however, courts faced with the situation here - in which wages and nonwages are commingled in a single account and are subsequently spent on both necessities and non-necessities - should apply a pro rata approach. They should presume, absent other evidence, that any spending out of the account was made up of a mixture of wage and nonwage dollars in proportion to the overall ratio of wage to nonwage deposits in the account.
C. Application of Non-Necessities Approach
Because the trustee waived his argument that another method should apply in calculating liability, we turn to the parties' dispute over the application of the Non-Necessities Approach. To repeat, the approach proceeds from the assumption that all nonwage deposits into the account were spent on non-necessities before any wage deposits were impermissibly spent on non-necessities. This, in turn, informs its formula for fraudulent-transfer liability:
Liability = (Non-Necessity Spending) - (Nonwage Deposits) .
The final skirmish in the case centers on the last term in the formula: nonwage deposits. In the Bankruptcy Court, the parties stipulated that nonwage deposits could be divided into $634,998.83 of explained nonwage deposits and $268,167.09 of unexplained nonwage deposits.
See
Titus III
,
To begin, we review the Bankruptcy Court's decision on this point for clear error.
See
Wettach
,
Aside from expecting the Tituses to follow this straightforward directive, there are at least three compelling reasons to apply a bright-line rule in situations like this. First, allowing an offset for unexplained deposits would "incentivize" debtors "not to come forward with any information that they had regarding the source of those funds,"
Cohen
,
In sum, we affirm the decisions of the Bankruptcy Court and District Court not to allow unexplained nonwage deposits to offset the Tituses' liability.
IV. Conclusion
To recap, we reach three conclusions on the path to affirming the judgment of the District Court. First, fraudulent-transfer liability attaches to both Mr. and Mrs. Titus for the deposit of Mr. Titus's wages from his law firm directly into the Tituses' entireties bank account. The wage deposits into the account constituted a "transfer" under the PUFTA. Mrs. Titus is personally subject to fraudulent-transfer liability as a joint owner of the account. And Mr. Titus is subject to transferee liability even though he is the debtor-transferor as well. As a result, the wage deposits were a fraudulent transfer that the bankruptcy trustee could avoid.
Second, the trustee waived any objection to the Bankruptcy Court's chosen method to calculate the Tituses' liability. The Court followed the so-called Non-Necessities Approach, which holds that fraudulent-transfer liability is non-necessity spending less nonwage deposits, and the trustee did not challenge the approach in his first appeal to the District Court. Going forward for commingled accounts, however, the Non-Necessities Approach rests on an unreasonable expectation that a trustee can show by a preponderance of the evidence that a dollar of wages was impermissibly spent on a non-necessity. When deposits from different sources are commingled in an account, the Non-Necessities Approach almost always forces a trustee to explain the unexplainable. Absent other evidence, future courts instead should presume that any spending out of an entireties account is made up of a mixture of wage and nonwage dollars in proportion to the overall ratio of wage to nonwage deposits in the account. This pro rata approach accounts practically for the commingling of fungible funds and is not foreclosed by precedent in our Circuit.
Third, the Bankruptcy Court did not clearly err in its application of the Non-Necessities Approach. The District Court had set out a simple rule that the Tituses had to explain the source of their deposits into the account. Despite the parties' stipulation that certain unexplained deposits were not wages, the Bankruptcy Court did not clearly err in refusing to offset the Tituses' liability by the amount of those unknown deposits.
Thus we affirm.
Judge Shwartz joins the opinion in all respects except its discussion of the
pro rata
approach because, among other things, the panel has unanimously concluded that the trustee waived his challenge to the method of calculating the Tituses' liability, and thus it is unnecessary to discuss the
pro rata
approach. Judge Shwartz is also of the view that the method for calculating the amount of fraudulent-transfer liability should be left to the discretion of the trial judge based upon the evidence provided.
Cf.
In re Gen. Motors Corp. Pick-Up Truck Fuel Tank Prods. Liab. Litig.
,
Several former partners of the Titus firm have faced the same fate since the firm's dissolution.
See
In re Wettach
,
As of February 22, 2018, the PUFTA was renamed the Pennsylvania Uniform Voidable Transactions Act.
See
Reference
- Full Case Name
- In RE: Paul H. TITUS, Alleged Debtor Robert Shearer, Trustee Appellant in No. 17-3823 v. Paul H. Titus; Bonnie Titus, Appellants in No. 17-3701
- Cited By
- 20 cases
- Status
- Published