Casey

AMENDED ORDER REVERSING AND REMANDING BANKRUPTCY COURT’S DECISION

I. INTRODUCTION

The Bankruptcy Code, found in Title XI of the United States Code, provides a bankruptcy trustee with a panoply of powers to discharge her statutory duties to administer the estate. These powers include the ability to challenge certain alleged fraudulent transfers so that the trustee can bring the property back into the estate for the benefit of outstanding creditors. But these powers have their limits.

Congress codified one such avoidance provision at 11 U.S.C. § 544 (b). The section provides that “the trustee may avoid any transfer of an interest of the debtor in property or any obligation incurred by the debtor that is voidable under applicable law by a creditor holding an unsecured claim.... ” § 544(b)(1). Generally, this section means that a trustee may assert standing on behalf of an existing unsecured creditor to invoke state law to set aside a fraudulent transfer. But whether Congress intended § 544(b) to apply to transfers occurring after the filing of a bankruptcy petition is a divisive, very unsettled issue nationwide given Congress’s apparent silence on the section’s temporal…