The liability of a co signer is the single most common misunderstanding about the law that I see. Put bluntly, a co-signer is just as liable for the debt as the primary borrower. Co sign someone else’s debt and you put yourself in the creditor’s cross hairs. That should make the hair on the back […]
All You Need To Know About Bankruptcy Stay & Pending Litigation
When a trial date looms, bankruptcy may look better and better to a defendant. Bankruptcy can be the emergency exit from a bad situation that is about to get worse. That’s because every bankruptcy case comes with an automatic stay . That’s a federal court injunction automatically entered when a bankruptcy case is filed, protecting the […]
We Live In An Economic House Of Cards
I’ve long said to bankruptcy clients that bankruptcy can’t fix an income problem, it can just ameliorate an outgo problem. In the last round of frantic bankruptcy filings a decade ago, one symptom seemed to be that too many families in the Silicon Valley couldn’t really afford to live a middle class life here. They […]
What Happens To Cash In Bankruptcy?
How much cash can you keep when you file bankruptcy? It’s not as though you won’t have living expenses after you file bankruptcy. You need to know how you’ll manage and what you’ll have to manage with. Funding that fresh start is what exemptions are all about. We are talking here about California because exemptions, […]
Out of Luck If You Skip A Creditor?
So, you slipped up and left a creditor out of your bankruptcy schedules. Can you add an omitted creditor after the fact? In the fateful words of a careful lawyer, it depends. Depends on when the amendment is made and what chapter you’ve filed. And the effect of adding a creditor varies. Let’s walk through […]
Unicorns, Wookies, And Medical Bankruptcies
What do Unicorns, Wookies, and Medical Bankruptcies have in common? Each is a figment of our imagination. None of them exists in the real world. Medical bankruptcy does not exist, despite the suggestion in a recent FoxBusiness article, where the author talked about medical bankruptcy contrasted to personal bankruptcy. When it comes to medical bankruptcy, consumers […]
Cheat Sheet For Passing Bankruptcy Means Test
The bankruptcy means test has a fatal weakness in its attempt to keep people out of bankruptcy. Like so much recently, it’s health care. It’s health care, in the future, to be paid before your creditors get any money in your bankruptcy. It works because, in a logic that only Congress could employ, the means […]
Cut Tax Penalties In Bankruptcy
Get in tax trouble and the tax penalties often grow huge. What starts as a manageable problem can soon tower over you. Breathe deep; there is a solution. Chapter 13 bankruptcy can cut tax penalties down to size. All tax penalties discharged in 13 Old or new, large or small, Chapter 13 discharges all unsecured […]
How Does Your Household Budget Measure Up?
The living expenses your paycheck has to cover go on and on. Each dollar is stretched; each expense clamors for attention. Too often, the expenses go on long after the available money is gone. What seem like immediate needs squeeze out those necessities that only come round occasionally but in big numbers: car repair, medical incidents, […]
Whopping exemption for CA 529 college accounts
A substantial new California exemption snuck into law in 2021, the college savings account exemption. It protects 529 college savings accounts from the creditors of parents. The exemption applies in all California collections and to California bankruptcies when the CCP 704 exemptions are selected. The eyeopener is that a parent (or other donor) can contribute […]
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