Read the case annotations for Section 523(a)(15)of the Bankruptcy Code casually, and you can go really wrong. It’s like the phone tree admonition: listen carefully because our options have changed. Before 2005, the dischargeability of non support obligations to former spouse or child incurred by the debtor in the course of divorce might be dischargeable, […]
Loss Mitigation: The Rules Have Changed
New federal rules on mortgage servicing can help homeowners avert disaster. But they only help if advocates know the latest. John Rao and Tara Twomey return next week with Part II of a free webinar on the new federal rules on loss mitigation for home mortgages. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued new […]
How Bankruptcy Courts Deal With Alimony and Support
The starting place for our exploration of bankruptcy and family law is support. Whether it’s called alimony, maintenance, or support, any amounts due at the commencement of a bankruptcy case are non dischargeable. Actually, since BAPCPA, it’s called a domestic support obligation. It got a statutory definition, as well: (14A) The term “domestic support obligation” means […]
Bankruptcy And Family Law : Your New Frontier
Divorce is one of the three major predictors of bankruptcy filing, along with job loss and illness. Families that might have been making it as a single household are now two households. Debts manageable before are now crushing. Or, families weren’t making it and the stress over money troubles hastens the end of the marriage. […]
Readers Vote With Their Mouse
Last time, I listed my 10 favorite Bankruptcy Mastery posts from 2013. Just for fun, I went back and looked at the 2013 traffic numbers for the top 10 Mastery posts, by readership. The two lists do not share a single post! What you read and hopefully found useful was an entirely different set of […]
The Best of Bankruptcy Mastery in 2013
Let’s have some retrospective before we look forward to bankruptcy lawyering in 2014. Here are my picks for my 10 favorite Mastery posts for 2013: Business Bankruptcy and the Bingo Effect- flushing out business creditors your client is oblivious to Untangling the Converted Case- what you need to know and what you need to tell the […]
What Price Silence?
Read any good orders lately? I read a not-so-good order yesterday. It affirmed sanctions against debtor’s counsel for advising the client to remain silent in the face of a Chapter 13 confirmation order to disclose. That sent me off to read through the standard order confirming plan in the Northern District. I was not keen […]
