In re Randolph- No Common Law Exemption for Firearms

Summary:

The bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina sustained  the Chapter 13 trustee’s objection to the debtors' attempt to exempt two firearms under the "arms for muster" exemption, based on North Carolina common law. The Randolphs argued that this exemption, which they believed to have originated from as far back pre-colonial common law, was still valid under N.C.G.S § 1C-1601(f).

The trustee objected, contending that no common law "arms for muster" exemption existed or, if it had existed, was no longer valid due to subsequent statutory codifications. The court reviewed historical statutes and common law and concluded that while an exemption for "arms for muster" may have existed in the 18th and 19th centuries, it was later codified into statutory law and eventually removed in the early 1900s.

The court found that the statutory "arms for muster" exemption was obsolete as it had been supplanted and later eliminated, and thus, no current exemption under North Carolina law allows the debtors to specifically claim their firearms as exempt on this basis, although wildcard or household goods exemptions were still available for firearms. 

Commentary:

While a minor loss for debtors (as this had no impact on their plan),  this opinion is still valuable both in being perhaps the first to recognize that there is a depth of legislative history in North Carolina regarding exemptions (that is also chaotic and seriously problematic to the point  of being repugnant) but also  in pointing the North Carolina legislature in the direction of exemption  reform.

With N.C.G.S § 1C-1601(f)  still explicitly providing that "[t]he exemptions provided by common law of this State shall apply for purposes of The Bankruptcy Code" the hunt to  find what such exemptions are continues (because surely the North Carolina legislature did not go off half-cocked and include superfluous language),  even without any explicitly protected arms for muster with which to do such hunting.

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