Smith v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

The appellee asks us to dismiss the appeal as moot, and the appellant opposes the request, raising an interesting procedural question.

The trustee in bankruptcy brought an adversary proceeding against State Farm, trying to get at money held by it for one of the two debtors in the bankruptcy proceeding as the administrator of her pension plan. The bankruptcy court ruled that the pension plan was not a “spendthrift trust” (that is, a trust not authorized to make distributions to the beneficiary’s creditors) and therefore that the debtor’s interest in it was included in the…