It was community property that garnered me my first hug from Doug Jacobs. Or rather, it was the absence of community property that did it. Confusion in custody determination and acquisitions is a common scene here. You see, Doug had described his dilemma with his case involving an elderly couple who had a home with […]
Face Off With Secured Creditor
When faced with a disputed lien strip, don’t discount the possibility of compromise. I wrote last time about the seeming impossibility of compromising a §707(b)(3) action. Next to that, lien strips are easy. Yet I see attorneys all around me folding the moment a secured creditor contests a motion to value. What opportunities squandered. Having […]
High Income Debtors & Money On The Table
Usually my posts here have a message or a lesson imbedded. This one doesn’t, unless readers can help me find it. But it was a prickly case that resolved well, for unanticipated reasons. Perhaps, there’s a lesson lurking somewhere here. The clients were well above median income: a high tech engineer and a stay at […]
Pot (Plan), Anyone?
What’s a Chapter 13 pot plan, you ask. Not one drafted while under the influence, for sure. A “pot plan” is the contrast to a “percentage plan“. They are alternative ways to summarize the measure of what the debtor in a Chapter 13 plan proposes to pay into the plan. A percentage plan reads something […]
How Much Does My Plan Have To Pay?
When an inexperienced Chapter 13 practitioner asks how much a plan has to propose to pay, I envision the Carnac the Magnificent routine from the Johnny Carson show. Carnak, in turban and robes, puts the sealed envelope with the question to his forehead, provides an answer, then opens the envelope to read the question. The […]
Why Ask Why?
Any parent who’s lived through the terrible 2’s knows the appeal, and the annoyance, of the question “why”. Life, to a two year old, is a series of interconnected questions. Why are things this way? Why? The centrality of that question to bankruptcy lawyers surprised me this weekend when Jay Fleischman and I conducted a […]
Scary Peak At Loan Mod Future
Loan modifications and the relative casualness with which they are documented scare me. Given the glaring problems that loan servicers have in accounting for payments made by borrowers and expenses charged to loans, the idea that those same people at the servicer are making good records about modifications seems naive. Consider that the same people […]
