## Facts

- Masako Sawada and Helen Sawada were injured in an automobile accident caused by Kokichi Endo.
- At the time of the accident, Kokichi and his wife, Ume Endo, owned a parcel of real property as tenants by the entirety.
- After the accident, the Sawadas filed tort actions against Kokichi and served him with process.
- Kokichi and Ume executed a deed transferring the entireties property to their sons, Samuel H. Endo and Toru Endo.
- The sons paid no consideration and knew their father had been in an accident and had no liability insurance.
- Kokichi and Ume continued to live on the property after the transfer.
- The Sawadas obtained money judgments against Kokichi but could not satisfy them from his personal property.
- The Sawadas filed an action in aid of execution to set aside the conveyance to the sons as fraudulent.
- The trial court refused to set aside the conveyance, and the Sawadas appealed.
- Shortly after entry of the tort judgments, Ume died, leaving Kokichi as the surviving spouse.

## Issues

1. Whether the interest of one spouse in real property held in tenancy by the entirety is subject to levy and execution by that spouse’s individual creditors during the spouses’ joint lives.
2. If not subject to execution, whether a conveyance of entireties property can be set aside as fraudulent as to a judgment creditor of only one spouse.

## Decision

- The Hawaii Supreme Court affirmed the judgment for the defendants.
- The court held that, during the joint lives of spouses, a spouse’s interest in tenancy-by-the-entirety property is not subject to levy or execution by that spouse’s individual creditors.
- Because the Sawadas, as creditors of Kokichi alone, had no enforceable right to reach the entireties property, they could not set aside the conveyance to the sons as fraudulent.

## Legal Principles

- In a tenancy by the entirety, each spouse is seized of the whole and neither spouse has a separate divisible interest that can be unilaterally conveyed or reached by execution.
- Under Hawaii law, entireties property is immune from attachment, levy, and execution by the individual creditors of either spouse during the spouses’ joint lives.
- A conveyance cannot be fraudulent as to a creditor who, as a matter of law, had no right to execute against the transferred property at the relevant time.
- The Married Women’s Property Acts were construed to equalize spouses’ control of marital property without converting entireties ownership into separate interests reachable by individual creditors.
- Policy considerations supporting immunity include protecting the marital household and placing the risk on post-creation creditors who extend credit with notice of the estate’s characteristics.

## Conclusion

The court concluded that because tenancy-by-the-entirety property is not reachable by the separate creditors of one spouse while both spouses are alive, the tort judgment creditors could not treat the spouses’ gratuitous transfer of that property to their sons as a fraudulent conveyance and the refusal to set aside the deed was affirmed.


Sawada v. Endo, 57 Haw. 608, 561 P.2d 1291 (Haw. 1977)