Concern for bankruptcy clients who weren’t well represented by brand new bankruptcy lawyers got me started with this project. As I told colleagues, some of the lawyering I saw was so bad that we needed to either teach the newcomers to be better lawyers or run them out of the practice, because they were unwittingly […]
The Mystery Of The Disappearing Means Test Deduction
Just when you thought you figured out the means test, a debtor throws you a curveball. Like the Naked City, there are eight million means test stories out there. This is one of them. Last night, I’m reviewing a petition that a young lawyer I mentor was prepared to file. The debtor is recently married […]
Means Test: Mean and Meaningless
Years after BAPCPA became law, I’m still grinding my teeth about the inanity of the means test. It consumes a huge amount of my time, gathering numbers about the cost of telecommunications services and my client’s projected costs of health care. I get to know more about their ailments than anyone but their spouse and […]
Means Test: Getting Business Income Correct
I expect clients to conflate themselves and their wholly owned business corporation; I didn’t expect the new bankruptcy lawyer to treat the corporation as if it didn’t exist. Yet as I reviewed a B-22 for a rookie bankruptcy lawyer, I found all of the corporation’s gross income included in the means test for the individual […]
Means Test & The Exemption See-Saw
What can my client do with non exempt cash or readily saleable items not protected by an exemption, the newbie asked. As I looked down my list of things to do with excess cash, I saw an issue I hadn’t explored before: some of best ways to use up non exempt cash may result in […]
Means Test Income And The Annual Bonus
The means test can be seen as a simple form in your bankruptcy petition preparation package – a glorified Form 1040 to be filed with each consumer case – or we can view it as it truly is. The simple becomes hazy, and what we knew coming into this aspect of our practice is persistently […]
Clients, Competence & Perjury
The schedules are signed under penalty of perjury. Just for certainty, let me say it again: your client signs the schedules under penalty of perjury. My partner reported a scene from a 341 meeting she attended while I was on vacation: the case ahead of ours sported a schedule J that was blank, while the […]
