One of the cosmic ironies of our legal system is that it costs money to file bankruptcy. Bankruptcy gets you out of debt only if you have the money to file. The costs of bankruptcy include the filing fee collected by the court; the required credit counseling; and, if you’re smart, an experienced lawyer to […]
The Judgment Lien That Escaped Your Bankruptcy
What do you do when you discover old judgment liens on your home long after you filed bankruptcy? Your bankruptcy case is closed. You’re recovering nicely. Then you find there’s a judgment lien on your house from before your bankruptcy that you didn’t know about. And the law says that liens survive a bankruptcy case, […]
5 Free Tools To Fight A Debt Collector
When a debt collector calls, the conversation often seems all too one-sided. The collector makes impossible demands. Nothing you say penetrates. Including your assertion that you don’t recognize the collector, the debt, or any legal responsibility for paying. Or maybe you recognize the debt but simply don’t have the money to deal with old debt […]
When Is The Time Right To File Bankruptcy
Just like stand-up comedy and batting in baseball, filing bankruptcy is all about timing. Timing your bankruptcy filing is no different. File bankruptcy too early, or too late, and you risk losing assets or advantages that better timing could have assured. Admittedly, you don’t always have the luxury of filing bankruptcy on your own schedule. […]
Debt Is Nothing To Shrug Off
When this site was young, U.S. Armed Services disclosed that a significant number of service personnel could not be deployed overseas because they had too much debt. The military said that excessive debt both distracts from job performance and makes the G.I. vulnerable to corruption. It’s the same for the rest of us and it’s […]
Life And Death of Debt In California
CPR has its place when human life is involved. Human life is precious. But when what’s dying is the legal right to collect a debt? Not so fast. You don’t want to breathe new life into an old debt that is legally dead. Yet you can do that, unintentionally reviving a debt that is legally […]
What If You Ignore That Lawsuit Against You
How do you ignore a lawsuit and expect a good outcome? Yet twice in the past few months, individuals have come to me with judgments already entered against them. That’s not noteworthy; after all, I’m a bankruptcy lawyer. We deal with unpaid judgments. But both of these men explained the situation this way: the claims […]
What You Left Out Of Your Bankruptcy Schedules
One of the first questions a bankruptcy trustee will ask you at the hearing in your bankruptcy case is: did you read the schedules before you signed them? The obvious, and expected, answer is YES. And if your answer is “yes”, then the trustee can conclude that you stand behind the information that the schedules […]
Save The House Even AFTER The Foreclosure Sale
The fall of the hammer at the foreclosure sale threatened to leave my widowed client homeless and poorer by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Instead, we recovered her house from the foreclosure sale under new California law which delays the finality of the change of title. She had rights after foreclosure. The prompt filing of […]
Do I qualify for bankruptcy in the Bay Area?
The higher-than-average wages in the Bay Area don’t disqualify you from bankruptcy, despite rampant misinformation about the bankruptcy means test. The means test, added to bankruptcy law in 2005, was (poorly) designed to keep above-average earners out of bankruptcy. But it hasn’t worked in the Bay Area, largely because of the cost of housing here. […]
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