The rookie bankruptcy lawyer called up to ask if the Chapter 13 plan had to provide the DMI amount in addition to the liquidation amount. Whoa! That’s taking good faith to an extreme. These are two different measures of what unsecured creditors are entitled to under Chapter 13. Section 1325(a)(4) requires that creditors get at […]
Small Business Can Be Big Trouble
The newbies in my neighborhood have had a vigorous online debate about the risks in filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy for a debtor with a proprietorship business. One faction simply refused to believe that a bankruptcy trustee could or would shut down an operating business upon filing. But real estate lawyers deemed it true. Believe it. […]
Welcome New Year
It’s 6:30 am and I’m anxious to get to my office to implement the improvements in my practice that I’ve been considering as we approach January, 2011. Isn’t one of Poor Richard’s aphorisms, “well begun is half done”? Don’t miss my friend Wendell Sherk’s piece, A Christmas Cheer for Consumer Lawyers. He captures the trials […]
Resolutions
It’s time to start considering resolutions for the New Year. I find I’m not very focused on December 31st and the idea has lost steam if I don’t line out my resolutions til mid January. In the context of a consumer bankruptcy practice, we’re probably talking about “goals” for the New Year: resolutions seems so […]
Why Earmark Tax Payments
Did you know that a taxpayer making a voluntary payment to the IRS can designate to which liability it is credited? The doctrine is called earmarking and it’s really useful when a prospective debtor owes taxes for both priority and non priority years. Absent instructions from the payor, the IRS applies payment to the oldest […]
Flush Out Client Misinformation
After you’ve gasped and giggled at the misleading bankruptcy information spotlighted here earlier, there is a serious point here: this sort of tripe creates real work for bankruptcy lawyers and a very real trap for clients. Incomplete, overstated, inaccurate stuff about bankruptcy is all over the web, authored by apparently knowledgeable sources. Your prospects read […]
Blog Heaven
On the off chance you want to read something other than this blog <g>, may I point you to the ABA’s list of candidates for best legal blogs. If I had a 36 hour day, I’d be reading an number of these. My favorite bankruptcy blog, of course, is Credit Slips, the work of a […]
