— The plaintiff, having obtained a judgment against the defendant, caused an attachment execution to issue, attaching an account of approximately $70 in the People’s Bank of Steelton. A stipulation has been filed in this case, in which it was agreed that this “was a checking account on which either Harry R. Bross or his wife, or both of them together, could draw checks; that the bank had previously honored checks signed by either of them on said account, and that the $70 could have been withdrawn from the said bank on the individual check of Harry R. Bross without the consent or knowledge of his wife,” and that the said fund, subject to the check of either or both as aforesaid, was derived from the joint earnings of Harry R. Bross and his wife.”
The question in this case is whether this account is an estate by entireties. If it be an estate by entireties, it is not liable for the husband’s debts. If it is not an estate by entireties, then it is liable. A tenancy by entireties may exist in personal as well as real estate; in choses in action as well as in choses in possession: Bramberry’s Estate, 156 Pa. 628. There may be an estate by entireties in a bank deposit: 2 Morse on Banks and Banking, § 604 (b). In order to create a tenancy by entireties, there must be unity of interest, unity of possession, unity of control, unity of disposition or encumbrance, and also a unity of person: 13 Ruling Case Law, § 121, page 1098; Chandler v. Cheney, 37 Ind. 391, 408. The question, therefore, arises whether all of these necessary unities attach to a bank deposit where there is the right in either the husband or the wife to check against or exhaust the fund.
In Watts v. Horn, 30 Dist. R. 325, Judge Evans, of the Common Pleas of Allegheny County, after quoting the language just above quoted from Biehl v. Martin, said, with reference to an account subject to the check of either husband or wife: “If either had the right of disposition without the joinder of the other, given in the instrument which created the estate, the estate created would not be an estate by entireties.”
In Osterling v. Van Arsdale, 70 Pitts. L. J. 971, heard before Judges Evans, Carnahan and Douglass, of the Common Pleas of Allegheny County, it was held that because the account could only be drawn on the joint check of husband and wife, it was an estate by>entireties. The court said: “Had this account been subject to the individual check of the two depositors, the situation would have been different.”
In Parry’s Estate, 188 Pa. 33, a letter of credit drawn to W. H. Parry and Minnie H. Parry, his wife, was held to create an estate by entireties. In that case there was no question of the right of either to draw upon the letter of credit without the joinder of the other, for the court said: “There is not a spark of evidence indicating any other intention than that which legally arises on the face of the paper.”
In Pilewsky v. Dickson City National Bank, 24 Lacka. Jurist, 9, Judge Maxey, of the Court of Common Pleas of Lackawanna County, held that a deposit in the name of Maryan Pilewsky or Yechuiga Pilewsky did not create an estate by entireties, saying: “The very fact that either could check on the account proves that the account was not held by entireties, as in an estate by entireties ‘neither husband nor wife can dispose of any part without the assent of the other:’ 2 Blaekstone, 182.”
In O’Malley v. O’Malley, 272 Pa. 528, 533, it is said: “Neither husband nor wife could sell even the expectancy of survivorship without the joinder of the other.”
To the same effect is the reasoning of the Superior Court in Fredrick’s Estate, 54 Pa. Superior Ct. 535.
In the light of these authorities, and having regard to the principles, it would seem that an account which could be checked out and dissipated by either the husband or the wife without the joinder of the other could not be an estate by entireties.
But the Supreme Court seems to have decided otherwise in Klenke’s Estate, 210 Pa. 572. Judge Over, of the Orphans’ Court of Allegheny County, held that a deposit in the name of husband or wife was an estate by entireties, which case was affirmed in a per curiam opinion without discussion. Judge Maxey, in the case of Pilewsky v. Dickson City National Bank, 24 Lacka.
We are bound by this last declaration of the Supreme Court, and must conclude that the deposit in this case is an estate by entireties, and, therefore, not subject to the attachment execution based upon the debt of the husband alone.
The rule granted to show cause why the attachment execution should not be dissolved is hereby made absolute, at the cost of the plaintiff.
From Sidney E. Friedman, Harrisburg, Pa.
