Transfers after a judgment, and the window that remains

Listen instead

The same material, read aloud and told more loosely than it is written. Nothing is said in it that this page does not also say.

That same recording, with the writing lit line by line as it plays and the sections listed beside it, is on its own page.

First, whether the lien was already there

Before any of the voidable transfer law matters, check the order of the two recordings.

A judgment docketed in the county where the property sits attaches to the debtor's interest from that moment. A conveyance recorded afterwards takes the property subject to the lien, and the question of whether the transfer was proper never has to be reached. The buyer owns a parcel with your judgment on it.

The interesting case is the other one. The deed went in first and the judgment came second. Then the lien never attached, and what remains is a claim against the transfer itself.

Two statutes, nearly the same words

New York and Florida both adopted the uniform act, so the tests read alike and the section numbers do not.

DCL 273¹ and Fla. Stat. 726.105² cover transfers voidable as to present or future creditors, which includes the intent case and the case where the debtor received less than a reasonably equivalent value while insolvent or about to become so. DCL 274³ and Fla. Stat. 726.106⁴ cover present creditors only, and 274(b) and 726.106(2) reach the insider preference: a transfer to an insider for an antecedent debt where the debtor was insolvent and the insider had reason to know it.

Which section applies decides which clock runs, and the clocks are not the same length.

The windows

DCL 278⁵ and Fla. Stat. 726.110⁶ extinguish the claim, and they do it in nearly identical language.

For the intent case the period is four years after the transfer, or one year after it was or could reasonably have been discovered, whichever is later. For the constructive cases under DCL 273(a)(2) and 274(a), and their Florida equivalents, it is four years flat with no discovery extension. For the insider preference under DCL 274(b) and 726.106(2) it is one year after the transfer.

One year is not a long time to notice a deed. And the recording date of that deed is a public fact from the day it is stamped, which is the argument the transferee will make about when you could reasonably have discovered it.

What the transferee gets to say

DCL 277⁷ and Fla. Stat. 726.109⁸ give the defense, and it is the one that decides most of these.

A transfer is not voidable under the intent provision against a person who took in good faith and for a reasonably equivalent value, or against any subsequent good faith transferee. So the question is rarely whether a transfer happened. It is what was paid for it, and whether the person who paid knew.

Which is why the consideration recited on a deed is worth reading even though it proves nothing. A deed reciting ten dollars between spouses and a deed reciting eight hundred thousand to a stranger are the same instrument type in the same index. They are not the same fact.

Reading it off the register

Four things are visible without leaving the public record, and none of them is a conclusion.

The recording date of the deed against the docketing date of the judgment, which settles whether the lien attached. The consideration recited. The relationship suggested by the names, where a transfer runs between people sharing a surname or to an entity whose name echoes the debtor's. And whether a mortgage was recorded at the same time, because a purchase financed by an institution is a different picture from one that was not.

None of that establishes intent or insolvency, and no page could. It establishes which of the four dates you are working from, and how much of the window is left.

What this does not cover

Everything that makes one of these cases actually win, which is most of it.

Insolvency at the time of the transfer is a financial question and the register holds no financial statements. Reasonably equivalent value is an appraisal question. Intent is proved from badges that are mostly not in any recorded document. Fla. Stat. 222.29⁹ removes the homestead exemption where the exemption results from a fraudulent transfer, which matters enormously in Florida and turns on the same facts nobody can read off a deed.

Nobody writing this is a lawyer and none of it is advice. Whether to bring an action to avoid a transfer is a decision for counsel, on facts that come from discovery rather than from a register. What a page can do is narrower. It can tell you which clock started on the day that deed was stamped, and how much of it has already run.