What is the name of your state? Florida
My former colleague sued me and the lawsuit has been going on for several years. I and my wife, along with our kids are barely surviving with a small job I have. I have bank account “joint with right of survivorship” with my wife and I deposit my salary in that. This is the practice we have been following several years prior to the lawsuit was filed. She contributes very little to that joint account as she has no regular job. I and my wife have been paying our credit card bills related to our normal living expenses from this account. After the lawsuit, my wife, with my permission, transferred $4,000 from this joint bank account to her personal account and paid $900 towards her credit card bills for normal living expenses and gave remaining $3,100 to her relative. After several months, she transferred $1,600 (more than half of that $3,100) to my personal bank account from her personal account, after she received a gift from her father. I thought we did nothing wrong. However, I was talking to a friend and he warned me of fraudulent transfers (he faced a lawsuit in the past from someone else) and gave me two important links: http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0700-0799/0726/0726.html and http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=&URL=0000-0099/0056/Sections/0056.29.html
Then I used my limited knowledge and read some law which I am sharing here. Still have doubts and sincerely request your help to guide me.
A). Paying my wife’s credit card bills (these bills are for her normal living expenses such as her cloths, groceries to our home, etc) directly from our joint account, or after transferring money to her single account (which she did with that $900), will come under fraudulent transfers?
B). The $3,100 she gave to her relative and returned me more than half of that (my calculation is that she own half of the joint account therefore she paid back directly to me more than half she borrowed from that joint account to give to her relative).
I have few more questions which will be irrelevant based on your kind response to the above questions. Please help me.
The case law I read is at https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6377793034494146442&hl=en&as_sdt=40006 : checking account was a joint tenancy with right of survivorship. In such an account, each tenant "has the right, against the other, only to his or her individual interest in the account" during the lifetime of the joint tenants; funds in the account belong to the parties in proportion to the net contributions by each to the sums on deposit. Nationsbank v. Coastal Utils., Inc., 814 So.2d 1227, 1229 (Fla. 4th DCA 2002). The supreme court recognized this concept in Beal Bank, SSB v. Almand & Associates, 780 So.2d 45 (Fla.2001), when it wrote that "n a joint tenancy with right of survivorship, each person has only his or her own separate share (`per my')[.]" Id. at 53. The shares in the joint account "[are] presumed to be equal for purposes of alienation[.]" Id.
My former colleague sued me and the lawsuit has been going on for several years. I and my wife, along with our kids are barely surviving with a small job I have. I have bank account “joint with right of survivorship” with my wife and I deposit my salary in that. This is the practice we have been following several years prior to the lawsuit was filed. She contributes very little to that joint account as she has no regular job. I and my wife have been paying our credit card bills related to our normal living expenses from this account. After the lawsuit, my wife, with my permission, transferred $4,000 from this joint bank account to her personal account and paid $900 towards her credit card bills for normal living expenses and gave remaining $3,100 to her relative. After several months, she transferred $1,600 (more than half of that $3,100) to my personal bank account from her personal account, after she received a gift from her father. I thought we did nothing wrong. However, I was talking to a friend and he warned me of fraudulent transfers (he faced a lawsuit in the past from someone else) and gave me two important links: http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0700-0799/0726/0726.html and http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=&URL=0000-0099/0056/Sections/0056.29.html
Then I used my limited knowledge and read some law which I am sharing here. Still have doubts and sincerely request your help to guide me.
A). Paying my wife’s credit card bills (these bills are for her normal living expenses such as her cloths, groceries to our home, etc) directly from our joint account, or after transferring money to her single account (which she did with that $900), will come under fraudulent transfers?
B). The $3,100 she gave to her relative and returned me more than half of that (my calculation is that she own half of the joint account therefore she paid back directly to me more than half she borrowed from that joint account to give to her relative).
I have few more questions which will be irrelevant based on your kind response to the above questions. Please help me.
The case law I read is at https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6377793034494146442&hl=en&as_sdt=40006 : checking account was a joint tenancy with right of survivorship. In such an account, each tenant "has the right, against the other, only to his or her individual interest in the account" during the lifetime of the joint tenants; funds in the account belong to the parties in proportion to the net contributions by each to the sums on deposit. Nationsbank v. Coastal Utils., Inc., 814 So.2d 1227, 1229 (Fla. 4th DCA 2002). The supreme court recognized this concept in Beal Bank, SSB v. Almand & Associates, 780 So.2d 45 (Fla.2001), when it wrote that "n a joint tenancy with right of survivorship, each person has only his or her own separate share (`per my')[.]" Id. at 53. The shares in the joint account "[are] presumed to be equal for purposes of alienation[.]" Id.