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 […]
The Real Money Rules Before Bankruptcy
Thinking about filing bankruptcy? Folk wisdom supplies many “rules” about the period leading up to actually filing bankruptcy: This kind of thinking will have you frozen in time and space like this insect in amber. Only, this folk “wisdom” is all wrong. Here’s how to manage money before filing without messing up your right to […]
The Worst Reason To Choose Debt Settlement Over Bankruptcy
The guy with an old debt asked if bankruptcy or debt settlement would cause greater damage to his “credit”. The money advice columnist gave the right answer to the wrong question. She got it backwards. She advised that bankruptcy was more damaging given that the nagging debts were already three years old and would drop off his […]
Does Bankruptcy Bar Retirement Savings?
Ongoing retirement saving by Chapter 13 debtors has been a touchy subject since the means test became a part of the bankruptcy scene. The means test was intended to squeeze every available dollar from consumer debtors. It works by limiting the expenses that can be deducted from income in figuring what a debtor can/must pay […]
Can You Spot The Signs Of A Collection Scam
It’s pretty scary when a $300 payday loan turns into an investigation by the Federal Crimes Bureau. Not only was the recipient of the collection letter below being “investigated for crimes”, his Social Security number would be suspended, and a court case initiated against him immediately. At great cost and embarrassment. Unless, of course, he sent the […]
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