A business lease often looms as one of the biggest claims in a bankruptcy case and a big issue for a small business. For bankruptcy lawyers,  the lease raises, as most of these things do, both traps and opportunities Beyond the common subject matter,  today’s observations are probably otherwise without a theme. Pivotal issue is […]

  Read any interesting tax returns lately? As bankruptcy lawyers, we’re required to collect them from our clients and funnel them to the trustee. But, are you reading them? Often, as a former employee used to say, they’re dry as dinosaur bones. But almost as equally, they provide new information or clues about assets and […]

  I had spent at least six hours with the clients over several months, strategizing about extracting them personally from a cratering business situation, when he said, “Oh, I haven’t told you about…” Others at the meeting said my eyes popped and I’m sure my face fell. He owned another business corporation, which had assets, […]

Why should I help my competitors? That was the query of a highly experienced bankruptcy lawyer I met at the Northern California Bankruptcy Forum last week. I heard the same push back on one of Jay Fleischman‘s listserves from a participant who didn’t want to share with others in his professional community an upcoming education […]

Kismet,  def. fate or destiny, seemed to be in play this weekend. Or maybe it’s that I’m like a magpie with a fixation on books rather than shiny objects. But the first thing that caught my eye in the exhibitors hall at the Northern California Bankruptcy Forum this weekend was the NCLC book on evidence.  […]

I learned something new last week and it took the ***!#### means test to teach it to me. The case involved a couple where the non filing wife ran an interior decorating business.  The income and expense information we were presented with showed “lots” of money flowing through the business. Subtract the given business expenses […]