Andree v. Equitable Trust Co.

The message of the Court of Appeals of Maryland, delivered to banking institutions and attaching creditors, through the medium of Fairfax v. Savings Bank of Baltimore, 175 Md. 136, 199 A. 872 (1938), was crystalline. In the Fairfax case, the Court held that in the absence of fraudulent conduct by a husband and a wife, a judgment creditor who has a claim against one spouse, but not both, may not attach a joint bank account, in trust for another, and subject to the order of either. The right to withdraw from the account, the Court said, is "a reserved personal right of each, and beyond the…