What New Bankruptcy Lawyers Need To Know: Beyond The Code

4 Ways To Know If You’ve Got A Bankruptcy Preference Problem

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

When should the debtor care about preferences? When it was family or they are filing Chapter 13, is my short answer. Everybody, debtors and lawyers, seem to know that there is something important about transfers made within 90 days of the commencement of the case. There seems to be lots of confusion about what that importance is. Debtors think that making a preferential … [Continue reading...]

How Much Of Your Client Are You Exposing?

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

Do you meekly send your client's tax return to creditors at their request? Two different authorities suggest it isn't necessary. One of the stick-it-to-the-debtor provisions of BAPCPA is the mandate that the debtor provide a copy of his tax return to any creditor who requests it. 11 USC 521(e)(2). [I wonder that the reform law didn't also require the debtor to strip naked at the 341.] Consider … [Continue reading...]

Here’s How To Charge More For A “Simple” Bankruptcy Case

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

Client buy- in and time records saved a Florida bankruptcy attorney from disgorging fees twice the local average for a no asset Chapter 7. How? Marilyn J. Hochman is the poster child for the benefit in keeping meticulous time records when you're representing consumer debtors. Even though you're likely working on a flat-fee agreement, the need to justify the value of your services is of … [Continue reading...]

Why A Successful Fee Application Needs A Story

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Attorneys fees

Newly appointed to the bench, the young judge considering a calendar of fee applications complained to the assembled lawyers. "Before I became a judge, you used to tell me the greatest client stories in the hall. How come those stories are missing from your fee apps?" That wistful question was voiced now well more than 20 years ago, but her comments still resonate in my head. A fee … [Continue reading...]

Perils Of The Courtroom

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

The judge approved my fee application for another $8,000 in a Chapter 13 that was never confirmed, but ambushed me on the statutory rules of conversion. It wasn't the fight I had prepared to make over getting paid. My fee application was an inch thick; it sliced and diced the work I had done before the debtor conceded that self employment in the real estate world would not allow him to keep … [Continue reading...]

When It Doesn’t Add Up

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

It wasn't a week after my friend Fredrick's presentation on due diligence for bankruptcy lawyers that the need for one of his tricks emerged. There seems to be an ethereal convergence about such things. The client hadn't revealed to the young lawyer bonuses that he had received in the means test look back period. The lawyer had a paystub for every period in the six months, but still missed this … [Continue reading...]

Five Steps To Due Diligence

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

Our professional well being and the successful outcome of the client's case may well depend on how well we, as attorneys, have done our due diligence. "I asked the client", you say. Perhaps not good enough, say the cases. Well done bankruptcy schedules require a substantial amount of information, much of it interrelated. Part of the strategy of the drafters of BAPCPA was to scare off debtors … [Continue reading...]

A Tax Reminder for Chapter 13 Debtors

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

Don't let your client forget to look at the Chapter 13 trustee's disbursements in the case for income tax deductions. Mortgage interest, property taxes, business expenses and state income tax payments all may lurk in the trustee's record of disbursements for 2010. Those payments are made with the debtor's money, and it seems therefore to me, at least, that the debtor should be able to deduct … [Continue reading...]

10 Clues in The Debtor’s Tax Return

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

Vital information lurks in the debtor's tax return. Are you flushing that information out and incorporating those nuggets in the petition, or are you content to wait for the trustee to confront your client in public at the 341 meeting with the inconsistency? Ten things you might find in the return: Dependents- how does the list of tax dependents compare to the current household size Wage … [Continue reading...]

Don’t Take The Client At His Word

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

Given all the energy bankruptcy lawyers spend extracting information from clients, it's discordant to point to a situation where you, as the bankruptcy lawyer, should blow past the client's input. But here's the situation where that is true: Don't list the debtor's interest in a decedent's estate without further inquiry. Ask the client if they are an heir or have an interest in an estate, and … [Continue reading...]

Get Exemption Claims Under The Limit

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Exemptions

The rookie bankruptcy lawyer was clearly proficient at math, but forgot the bankruptcy administration end game: money for creditors. The client owned two assets with apparent equity and the available grubstake did not cover both. The attorney had calculated the equity in the home thus: (Fair market value) less (mortgage balance) less (exemption) = equity The equity, on his … [Continue reading...]

How To Enforce The Discharge Injunction

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

Every once in a while, courts tell us explicitly how to do things. The 9th Circuit took its turn when it laid out how to get a violation of the debtor's discharge before the court. The narrow issue in Barrientos v. Wells Fargo, 09-55810,was whether the action against a creditor with a discharged debt should be brought as an adversary or as a motion. The 9th voted for a motion , reasoning … [Continue reading...]

What The Bankruptcy Trustee Hopes You Forget

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

Remember the float? Your client's check book balance may not be the funds on hand when the bankruptcy case is filed. Too often the client whips out his checkbook to tell what's on deposit when we gather to sign the bankruptcy petition. The client has already deducted, at least mentally, the recent checks he's written. But call the bank, and you may get a far larger number if … [Continue reading...]

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