Bankruptcy News
The Power of a Power of Attorney in Bankruptcy
It’s not uncommon for us to have consultations with family members who are concerned about a parent or sibling’s debt problems. Sometimes the parent or sibling is present for the consultation, sometimes they aren’t. What can cause difficulty sometimes is...
What's Your Sleepless Night Worth?
The moment a bankruptcy case is filed, an automatic stay is imposed that requires all creditors to stop their collection activities. Since most creditors in a bankruptcy case are large institutions who process countless bankruptcy filings every day (Bank of America, Citi, Ford Motor Credit),...
More Attacks on the "Snap-shot" Approach to Bankruptcy
One of the central tenants of bankruptcy law says that if a debtor has disposable money lying around at the end of each month, they should pay it to their creditors. How to determine a debtor’s disposable income is, however, rather complicated. A regular question...
Joint Tax Refunds in an Individual Bankruptcy Case
Tis the season for tax refunds! It goes nearly without saying that a tax refund – whether a debtor in bankruptcy has physically received it or not – is property of the debtor’s bankruptcy estate and vulnerable to being taken by a chapter 7...
A Statistical Look at 2011
Bankruptcy filings were down 11% in 2011. Since 2006, the number of bankruptcy cases filed each year has grown. Last year, for the first time in several years, they fell nationally. There are a couple of reasons for this. The most optimistic perspective on these numbers is the...
MERS - When It's a Distraction and It's a Foe
When the curtain was pulled back on the mortgage industry a few years ago, one of the alarming surprises was to find what an out-sized role Mortgage Electronic Registration System, Inc (MERS) played in the home loan industry – not an illegal...
The Difference Between a House and a Home
This month, The New Yorker ran one of those articles that seemed a lot more common a year ago. In it, they described the phenomenon of simply walking away from real estate where the loan exceeds the value of the property. The...
Wall Street Journal Article About Post-bankruptcy Collection
Today’s Wall Street Journal had a story about Capital One continuing to collect on debt that had been discharged in bankruptcy cases. It’s not uncommon for a stray collection letter or two to make their way to a debtor’s mail...
The Morality of Bankruptcy
We take our religious piety pretty seriously around here, so when a client expresses dismay over the ethical dilemmas that bankruptcy invites, we listen carefully. The last thing we want to do is shrug off the spiritual components of our clients’ financial...
You're the Debt-Settlement Company You've Been Waiting for
Deceptive debt-management companies were in the news again recently. This time in North Carolina Lawyer’s Weekly, where correspondent Sabine Vollmer described an intramural scuffle between state regulators and naughty attorneys who lend their names to out-of-state debt settlement companies. The...
