Cite as: 522 U. S. 211 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
a statutory grace or relation-back period to be perfection as of the creation of the underlying security interest. Under Missouri law, for example, a "lien or encumbrance on a motor vehicle . . . is perfected by the delivery [of specified documents] to the director of revenue," Mo. Rev. Stat. § 301.600(2) (1994), but the date of the lien's perfection is "as of the time of its creation if the delivery of the aforesaid to the director of revenue is completed within thirty days thereafter, otherwise as of the time of the delivery." Ibid. Thus, Fidelity contends that although it delivered the required documents more than 20 days after Beasley received the car, its lien must be treated as perfected on the day of its creation because it delivered the papers within the 30 days allowed by state law to qualify for the relation-back advantage. If this is sound reasoning, Fidelity's lien was perfected on August 17, 1994, the very day that Beasley drove away in her Ford, and Fidelity may invoke § 547(c)(3)'s enabling loan exception.3
The assumption that the term "perfected" as used in subsection (c)(3)(B) and defined in subsection (e)(1)(B) may refer to the relation-back date is not to be made so easily, however. It is quite certain, to begin with, that in the relevant context Congress sometimes used the word "perfection" to mean the legal conclusion that for such purposes as calculating priorities perfection of a lien should be treated as if it had occurred on a particular date, and sometimes used it to refer to the acts necessary to support that conclusion. Section 546(b)(1)(A) speaks of state laws that permit "perfection . . . to be effective . . . before the date of perfection." 11 U. S. C.
3 As Fidelity suggested in passing at oral argument, see Tr. of Oral Arg. 22-23, its reading of the term "perfected" in § 547(e)(1)(B) would carry another consequence. If the lien were "perfected" under that provision as of the date of its creation, the transfer would presumably be treated as having taken place on that date, 11 U. S. C. § 547(e)(2)(A), outside the 90-day preference period set forth in § 547(b)(4)(A), and would not have been a voidable preference at all.
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