Loumpos v. Bank One Case Analysis

In Loumpos v. Bank One, No. SC2024-1256 (Fla. Dec. 11, 2025), the Florida Supreme Court held that section 655.79 authorizes a joint spousal bank account to be held as a tenancy by the entireties even if one spouse originally opened the account. The unanimous decision quashed a Second District ruling that had let a creditor garnish an account a husband opened alone before adding his wife.

The ruling rests on the statute rather than on Beal Bank, which the Court said does not reach an account one spouse opened. The holding reaches the deposit accounts the statute covers; the Court said nothing about brokerage accounts or other personal property, where the common-law rules, including the unities, still apply. A writing that expressly disclaims entireties ownership still defeats the presumption.

How a Husband’s Individual Account Became an Entireties Account

Linda Loumpos had a default judgment entered against her in 2003. She later married Peter Maragoudakis and took his name. In February 2017, Peter opened a bank account in his name alone. In October 2017, the couple signed new signature cards stating that the account belonged to “Peter Maragoudakis & Linda Maragoudakis, Ten by Enty,” and they checked the card’s “Joint Tenants by Entirety” box. Peter’s wages were the only money ever deposited in the account.

The 2003 judgment was eventually assigned to Dove Investment Corp., which served a writ of garnishment on the account. The case carries the name of Bank One, the first-named respondent, but Dove was the creditor pressing the garnishment. Linda claimed the account was exempt because it was an entireties account and the debt was hers alone. Dove answered that her name was not on the account when Peter opened it, so the unities of time and title were missing and the account could not be entireties property.

She did not dispute that the two unities were absent. She argued that under Beal Bank, an express entireties designation on a signature card “ends the inquiry” into the form of ownership, and that section 655.79(1) made every spousal account an entireties account unless a writing provided otherwise, whatever the unities. The county court in Pinellas County rejected both arguments, held that the unities of time and title were still required, and denied her claim of exemption.

The Second District affirmed on August 2, 2024. The panel held that neither Beal Bank nor the statute had eliminated the common-law unities, even where the signature card expressly designates a tenancy by the entirety. The court certified conflict with the Fourth District’s decision in Versace v. Uruven, LLC, 348 So. 3d 610 (Fla. 4th DCA 2022). The Florida Supreme Court took the case on the certified conflict; Justice Canady wrote for a unanimous court.

Why Beal Bank Did Not Decide the Question

The Florida Supreme Court held in Beal Bank, SSB v. Almand & Associates, 780 So. 2d 45 (Fla. 2001), that a bank account in both spouses’ names, where the unities exist, is presumed entireties property unless the signature card expressly disclaims it. Every question the Court answered there, however, assumed that “the unities required to establish ownership as a tenancy by the entireties exist,” and all of the accounts had been opened by both spouses.

The Court in Beal Bank also said, in a footnote, that it would not address a Merrill Lynch account one spouse had opened and later amended to add his wife. Another footnote declined to discuss whether the unity of time still belonged on the list. The Loumpos court read those footnotes as deliberate limits, saying Beal Bank “went out of its way to limit its policy-based holdings to the facts presented there,” meaning joint accounts opened and maintained by both spouses.

The wife relied on Beal Bank‘s statement that an express entireties designation “ends the inquiry as to the form of ownership” once it appears on the signature card. That line, the Court explained, was written about proving the spouses’ intent, and Versace had misread it.

What Beal Bank still governs is the rest: the presumption for an account both spouses opened, the forms an express disclaimer can take, and the rule that only the creditors of both spouses jointly may attach entireties property. Loumpos changed none of that.

Does a Spousal Bank Account Still Need the Unities of Time and Title?

No, a spousal deposit account no longer needs them: the presumption the Legislature added in 2008, the Court held, is not defeated when the unities of time and title are missing. The amendment added one sentence, “Any deposit or account made in the name of two persons who are husband and wife shall be considered a tenancy by the entirety unless otherwise specified in writing,” and the text stands unchanged today.

The creditor and the Second District read “account made in the name of two persons” as an account created in both names from the start. That reading, the Court held, “cannot be squared with the plain text” of the statute. The statute’s phrase “any deposit or account made,” the Court said, “unmistakably looks beyond account inception,” and the creditor’s reading “wholly ignores ‘[a]ny deposit … made,’ language that clearly contemplates more than just initial account creation.”

When an individual account is changed to a joint spousal account, the Court wrote, “it can certainly be said” that the account has been made in the names of husband and wife. The subsection’s first sentence, which presumes survivorship for any multi-party deposit account, likewise speaks of “the opening or maintenance of an account” and so reaches past the opening day.

Subsection (2), which says how the presumption is overcome, “says nothing about any unities,” the Court observed. A tenancy by the entireties is a joint tenancy plus the unity of marriage. If subsection (1)’s first sentence makes time and title irrelevant to joint tenancies, the Court said, it “strains reason” that the entireties sentence added to the same subsection would still require them.

The Second District had applied the rule that statutes do not change the common law unless they do so clearly. It had noted that section 689.11 abolished those unities for real estate one spouse deeds to both spouses, and that a 2019 bill abolishing them for personal property never passed.

The Supreme Court answered that a presumption against changing the common law is no reason to reject a fair reading that does change it, and that courts “should not manufacture ambiguity” to defeat one. Read in its full context, the Court concluded, the sentence cannot be taken to mean “account originally made” in both spouses’ names.

Why the Court Approved Versace Only in Part

The Florida Supreme Court approved Versace only “to the extent it is consistent with this opinion,” and the Fourth District’s stated ground was not. In Versace, a wife had opened a Bank of America account alone; years later she and her husband signed a new card expressly designating the account as tenants by the entireties. The Fourth District held the account exempt from garnishment on the husband’s judgment because it read Beal Bank as controlling.

The Supreme Court rejected that ground, since Beal Bank decided nothing about a missing unity, but kept the result and the statutory reading Versace “seemingly” reached without “a full analysis of the statutory text” to support it. In one other part of Versace that still stands, the Fourth District let the garnishment of two non-spousal joint accounts go forward because there was no transcript of the hearing. The statute’s entireties sentence reaches only husband-and-wife accounts in any event.

What Loumpos Left in Place

The entireties presumption still yields to a writing that says otherwise, though Loumpos did not reach that question. In Storey Mountain, LLC v. George, 357 So. 3d 709 (Fla. 4th DCA 2023), the disclaimer sat in the bank’s standard checking account agreement, which the couple’s otherwise silent signature card incorporated by reference. The agreement said a spousal account “is NOT owned as tenants by the entireties” unless expressly designated otherwise, and the Fourth District held that a writing incorporated into the signature card can carry the disclaimer.

In Storey Mountain v. Del Amo (In re Del Amo), No. 24-13216 (11th Cir. Nov. 10, 2025), the Eleventh Circuit held that the writing must expressly disclaim tenancy by the entireties. “It is not enough to say the account is something else,” the court wrote, so fine print saying only that “joint accounts are owned as joint tenants with right of survivorship” left the account exempt in the husband’s bankruptcy.

In both decisions the test was the same: boilerplate calling the account a joint tenancy is not enough, while language that names tenancy by the entireties and rejects it is. Loumpos, George, and Del Amo join Beal Bank and Versace among the decisions on Florida spousal bank accounts that set the rule that a spousal account is entireties property unless a writing expressly disclaims it, whichever spouse opened the account.

The decision also says nothing about brokerage accounts or other personal property. The Fourth District noted in Versace that Beal Bank “only addressed bank accounts” and that the Merrill Lynch account it declined to address was most likely a stock account. For a brokerage account, an entireties claim still runs on the common law rather than on section 655.79, so the unities the statute displaced for deposit accounts still count there.

Nor does the decision touch the other limits on entireties protection. A creditor holding a judgment against both spouses can reach the account, and the federal tax lien reaches a taxpayer’s interest in entireties property under United States v. Craft. And Beal Bank itself said that concerns about debtors who shield assets from creditors “are more properly addressed by” the fraudulent transfer statutes, a caveat the Fourth District repeated in Versace.

What Loumpos Means for a Married Couple’s Bank Account

A married couple’s joint bank account is presumed to be entireties property, whichever spouse opened it, unless a writing connected to the account expressly disclaims tenancy by the entireties. Before Loumpos, a creditor could argue that an account one spouse opened and later retitled had failed the unities of time and title; after Loumpos, that argument is gone for deposit accounts.

The reliable path is unchanged. A couple reads the bank’s account agreement for a disclaimer, then opens the account in both spouses’ names with an express entireties designation. Loumpos supplies the defense when a creditor attacks an account that was already converted. A couple whose existing account is not entireties property is still better served by opening a new, correctly titled account and moving the funds than by asking the bank to retitle the old one. A presumption can be contested, and a conversion invites the fraudulent-transfer argument Beal Bank preserved.

Two paperwork choices defeat the presumption outright: selecting joint tenancy when the bank’s card offers an entireties option, and banking where the account agreement expressly disclaims entireties ownership. A joint account garnished for one spouse’s debt is released only after the couple contests the writ and the court rules on how the account is owned, which is how Beal Bank, Versace, and Loumpos each reached the courts.

Bank accounts now stand with real estate as tenancy by the entirety property that a married couple can create without the unities of time and title. Loumpos joins Beal Bank and Craft among the Florida asset protection decisions that decide who can reach a married couple’s property.