Put aside inexperience: the most important reason not to take on a Chapter 11 is that it can kill your practice. The rules and procedures for Chapter 11 were created for the debtor “big boys”, the corporations that hire tall-building lawyers by the score. There are innumerable hoops to jump through, even if you were […]
Really Subtle Trick For Discharging Taxes
While the IRS shows the early withdrawal penalty for taking money from an IRA as tax, several cases uphold treating it as a penalty, therefore, dischargeable in Chapter 13. No matter how often I go to NACBA events, I always end up with a couple of dynamite ideas that justify the time and expense. This […]
Meet Me in Puerto Rico
Dateline: San Francisco International Airport I’m leaving on a jet plane, to coin a phrase<g>, for NACBA’s Fall Workshop in Puerto Rico. Nothing that all day on a plane can’t accomplish. If you’re attending, please look me up and introduce yourself. I’d love to have faces attached to names, in the ever optimistic thought that […]
New Bankruptcy Lawyers – Beware Strangers With Candy
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 […]
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 […]
