Characterization of causes of action for state law limitations purposes was irrelevant to dischargeability issue.
The fact that, under Texas law, a daughter’s misappropriation of funds from her 82-year-old mother’s account would support a cause of action only for breach of fiduciary duty and not for embezzlement, on which the pertinent two- year statute of limitations had already run before the mother sued the daughter in state court, was irrelevant to whether the daughter’s debt to the mother, based on her breach of fiduciary duty as a manager of the mother’s property, could be excepted from discharge when the daughter subsequently filed for Texas Chapter 7 bankruptcy attorney relief as a debt for the daughter’s “embezzlement.” The court had to conduct a two-part inquiry, under which it first determined whether the mother had a claim, in the form of a viable cause of action for breach of fiduciary duty or embezzlement that was not barred by the pertinent Texas statutes of limitation, and then determined whether the circumstances surrounding creation of this debt were such as to trigger a federal dischargeability exception, without regard to how the causes of action were characterized for state law statute of limitations purposes.
