In a case that required the court to interpret a statutory amendment from 30 years ago—and which saw a young litigator make his first appellate argument in New Jersey in a dispute among his relatives—the Appellate Division held that a third-party creditor can’t go after land owned jointly by spouses.

Before the enactment of N.J.S.A. 46:3-17.4 in 1988, “case law in our state had authorized courts to compel the partition and sale of a spouse’s interests in property held in a tenancy by the entirety, in instances where equitable considerations justified such a remedy,” the Appellate Division said Tuesday in Jimenez v. Jimenez, a published decision.