File bankruptcy before or after a divorce? It’s the classic bankruptcy family law conundrum. We think about about bankruptcy addressing the claims of third parties against the spouses. But consider the impact of a bankruptcy discharge granted to one spouse prior to the resolution of the divorce. What are the options and alternatives for the […]
Domestic Support Obligations: When The Rules We Know Change
As bankruptcy lawyers, we’d like to get the world trained to simply halt in their tracks when a bankruptcy is filed and the automatic stay is invoked. It’s not so simple when there are family law proceedings afoot. Automatic stay Section 362(a) enjoins continuation of an action against the debtor to recover a claim or […]
Non Support Debts In Bankruptcy: Our Options Have Changed
Read the case annotations for Section 523(a)(15)of the Bankruptcy Code casually, and you can go really wrong. It’s like the phone tree admonition: listen carefully because our options have changed. Before 2005, the dischargeability of non support obligations to former spouse or child incurred by the debtor in the course of divorce might be dischargeable, […]
How Bankruptcy Courts Deal With Alimony and Support
The starting place for our exploration of bankruptcy and family law is support. Whether it’s called alimony, maintenance, or support, any amounts due at the commencement of a bankruptcy case are non dischargeable. Actually, since BAPCPA, it’s called a domestic support obligation. It got a statutory definition, as well: (14A) The term “domestic support obligation” means […]
Bankruptcy And Family Law : Your New Frontier
Divorce is one of the three major predictors of bankruptcy filing, along with job loss and illness. Families that might have been making it as a single household are now two households. Debts manageable before are now crushing. Or, families weren’t making it and the stress over money troubles hastens the end of the marriage. […]
Divorce and Bankruptcy: Frequent & Discordant Pairing
I hadn’t hit the steps of my office on the way back from a speaking engagement before the phone rang with a resulting referral. My speech addressed the intersection of bankruptcy and family law. What a fruitful pairing. While my presentation to a bar section of family lawyers was entitled When Worlds Collide, it could […]
Know the Rules of Debt, Divorce & Discharge
Today let’s combine the themes of my last two posts here and talk about the obligation of a spouse to indemnify the other spouse in a divorce from the debts assigned to the spouse. The indemnity obligation is not one most lay people see as a “debt”. It doesn’t involve paying money to the ex, […]
