Replace your car before filing bankruptcy. That’s a secret, just between us. Bankruptcy “reform” in 2005 tried in a number of ways to discredit and gag lawyers trying to help debtors. One of those additions to the Bankruptcy Code prohibits lawyers from advising those filing bankruptcy to incur new debt. The statute makes no distinction […]
Bankruptcy Alphabet: J For Justify
J stands for Justify in my Bankruptcy Alphabet. Or rather, it stands for “no need to Justify” your decision to file bankruptcy. Those considering bankruptcy imagine the first meeting of creditors as an inquisition by the trustee. They fear that they will have to justify their choice of bankruptcy and that the trustee could disallow […]
Six Rotten Excuses Not To File Bankruptcy
I am not a bankruptcy attorney. I never have been. I am a mortgage law attorney. But in the current financial climate, I see clients in my office daily who desperately need to file bankruptcy…And they won’t. The reasons they give, and the parade of horrors they’ve built up in their minds about bankruptcy, are heart-felt, […]
Bankruptcy Discharge vs. Dismissal
Dismissed and discharged. In a bankruptcy case, these two terms are at the opposite ends of the scale of results in bankruptcy. Yet they are often confused. A discharge is a win! The bankruptcy discharge order wipes out your personal legal liability to pay a debt. A dismissal is usually a loss. It means the […]
Get A Deal On Your Car After Bankruptcy
How are you going to keep your car after you file Chapter 7 bankruptcy? Here in California , little is more essential to holding a job and really getting a fresh start than a car to get to work in. While the bankruptcy discharge will relieve you of liability for the loan on the […]
California Homestead Works In Other States, Too
California homestead law drives bankruptcy exemptions even for those who no longer live in California. Strange, when the homestead statute was state law originally written for Californians. Two things have expanded its reach: bankruptcy “reform” and the concept of extraterritoriality. The third driver, of course, is mobility: we seem much more likely these days to […]
File bankruptcy tomorrow?
Clients clearly have little sense of how long it takes to file bankruptcy. Proof is what happened Monday: there’s an email the morning’s inbox from a client whom I first met weeks ago. He tells me they want to file before Wednesday’s mediation in state court! I have no creditor information, representation agreement, money, or […]
The Means Test: Badly Mangled
Another purported financial professional has confidently and conclusively gotten the bankruptcy means test absolutely dead wrong. And used that wrong conclusion to steer someone away from bankruptcy. Mt. St. Helens has nothing on me in terms of venting. How can financial professionals get this so wrong, more than a decade after the means test was enacted? Mangling the […]
How A Careless Bankruptcy Can Bite Your Family
Your bankruptcy can affect your family even though they haven’t filed bankruptcy. Transfer assets or repay debts , and you can expose family to attack by the bankruptcy trustee. Even if not fatal, the trustee’s bite can leave scars. How family gets sucked in I sat waiting for my turn at a bankruptcy hearing last week […]
How Chapter 13 Saves You Money
Why should I file Chapter 13 if I have to pay all my creditors in full? Because, I said, even a 100% repayment plan under Chapter 13 saves you money. This client had a fistful of equity in a home; that equity made a Chapter 13 the required choice of chapter for the man. But […]
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