You’re a first time employee. Congratulations. Welcome to the world of tax forms, withholding, and tax deadlines. Taxes are the price we pay for civilization, according to Oliver Wendell Holmes. In fact, the first day on your new job you’ll be presented with an IRS form w-4. It’s like a rite of passage into adulthood. Even families […]
Your Creditors Lie In Wait For Your Kids
Is your legacy to your kids an encounter with your unpaid creditors? Debt problems for those over 65 may not be problems for the elder at all. Income and assets are largely protected by law from creditors. But that doesn’t trouble creditors: they’ll simply wait and get their money from your kids. Seniors enjoy protection […]
How Your Property Gets Sold In Your Partner’s Bankruptcy
It isn’t just marriage that can get you roped in to a bankruptcy case that isn’t your own. Own community property and a bankruptcy filing by your spouse or your soon-to-be ex can drag you into a bankruptcy court. But the issue is broader: joint ownership of any kind of asset in any state, community […]
How Their Telephone Can Ruin Elders
The elderly couple was suddenly in financial trouble. The two mortgages on their home were a couple of months delinquent. Their bank account had just been levied by the state taxing authority. They hadn’t filed tax returns in several years. From the outside, it didn’t seem like anything had changed. Yet their financial world was […]
Cut Tax Liens Down to Size
Tax liens are no match for Chapter 13 when it comes to cutting the lien down to its real value. On paper, a tax lien can quickly become huge. In bankruptcy however, a lien is no bigger than the value of the assets it attaches to. While in Chapter 7, liens pass through bankruptcy without […]
Google & Me
Google and BankruptcyInBrief share a birthday, I’ve learned. I’m sure you saw the similarities in a flash. The Mercury News reports that Google was founded in 1998, the same year I bought a book and set out to make a web site about bankruptcy. I knew nothing about programming, and less about web design. But I knew that […]
Your Home Is Not A Piggy Bank
Right before the Great Recession, lenders, main stream and fly-by-night, urged us to “tap the equity in your home for what you want today”. California home values were rising. Credit was easy. And we always want something more, don’t we. We need to remember those days, because those sales pitches are back. Back on the radio and […]
Essential Tasks After Bankruptcy To Maximize Your Fresh Start
Got your bankruptcy discharge recently? The end of the bankruptcy case is the start of your new financial life. Now, you’ve got work to do to maximize that fresh start. Save your bankruptcy papers The bankruptcy schedules listed everyone you owed money to when you filed. Those creditors got notice of your case. The […]
What Asset of Failed Business Is Most Valuable?
Usually I rant about mistakes clients made when they incorporated their ongoing business. Come hard times for the business, those mistakes eat into our options for the owners survival when the corporation goes down. Invariably, the vendor accounts remain in the name of the proprietor, the stock may not have been issued, and it’s unclear whether there was an […]
Why I Hate Credit Reporting Agencies
If you have a couple of hours, I’ll count the ways. But this morning, it’s half truths and moralizing by Experian that gets me going. My fellow California bankruptcy lawyer Jay Fleischman published Experian’s explanation of how long your bankruptcy filing stays on your credit record. Chapter 13 bankruptcy is deleted seven years from the […]
