Bankruptcy Mastery

Becoming a better bankruptcy lawyer

On The Trail of The Involuntary Lien

By Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

If you just  ask the client for a bill from each creditor, you stand to miss tax and judgment lien creditors who don't send a monthly bill. Schedule D of the bankruptcy schedules should call out each entity with a secured claim on the debtor's assets.  Car lenders and mortgage companies are at the forefront of our clients'  minds and are seldom missed.  But a bankruptcy lawyer often has to dig … [Continue reading...]

Case of the Naked Client

By Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

The bankruptcy petition  came to my desk for review with no entry for "clothing and wearing apparel".  Funny, I think I'd remember if I'd interviewed any naked people lately. My new assistant has simply transcribed what the client reported on the questionnaire, and when questioned, the client shrugged that his clothing had no value, so he left it blank. There are two overlapping issues here.  … [Continue reading...]

Business Partners: Another Phantom Creditor

By Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

Icon of Saint

After the discharge, the debtor wondered  how her  agreement with a former business partner  to pay the former partner was affected by the bankruptcy, since the partner wasn't listed in the schedules. After wondering how the client hadn't mentioned it and I hadn't flushed it out, I said a prayer to St. Beezley for the protection of fools in bankruptcy. Beezley is the 9th Circuit case that … [Continue reading...]

Case Closed: Too Soon

By Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

Do I have to wait til the bankruptcy discharge is entered to avoid a lien under §522(f)? It might be logical but do so at your peril, I replied.  Actually "peril" is an overstatement, but in this date of electronic dockets, most clerk's offices are closing no asset Chapter 7 cases just as soon as the discharge is entered. I recently  found my judge without jurisdiction to award fees for the … [Continue reading...]

Writer’s Block And The Bankruptcy Schedules

By Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

Comes the plaintive call on the phone:  how do I list this? Faced with a blank schedule  and a house, located in another state,  titled to an estranged  non filing spouse, in which the debtor may have a claim under the marital property laws of California, the rookie bankruptcy lawyer froze. I'm flattered to be asked, but the answer is, it hardly matters.  List it, and you've done the most … [Continue reading...]

What Goes In The Chapter 13 Pot

By Filed Under: Chapter 13

The rookie bankruptcy lawyer called up to ask if the Chapter 13 plan had to provide the DMI amount in addition to the liquidation amount. Whoa!  That's taking good faith to an extreme.  These are two different measures of what unsecured creditors are entitled to under Chapter 13.  Section 1325(a)(4) requires that creditors get at least what they  would have gotten had the case been filed under … [Continue reading...]

Small Business Can Be Big Trouble

By Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

The newbies in my neighborhood have had a vigorous online  debate about the risks in filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy  for a debtor with a proprietorship business.  One faction simply refused to believe that a bankruptcy trustee could or would shut down an operating business upon filing.  But real estate lawyers deemed it true.  Believe it. In addition to Georgia business attorneys help, I got to ask … [Continue reading...]

Welcome New Year

By Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

It's 6:30 am and I'm anxious to get to my office to implement the improvements in my practice that I've been considering as we approach January, 2011. Isn't one of Poor Richard's aphorisms, "well begun is half done"? Don't miss my friend Wendell Sherk's  piece, A Christmas Cheer for Consumer Lawyers. He captures the trials and the triumphs of this practice as well as anything I've read. Let … [Continue reading...]

Resolutions

By Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

It's time to start considering resolutions for the New Year.  I find I'm not very focused on December 31st and the idea has lost steam if I don't line out my resolutions til mid January. In the context of a consumer bankruptcy practice,  we're probably talking about "goals" for the New Year:  resolutions seems so tinged with self improvement. (I'm going to try the resolves shown above:  want to … [Continue reading...]

Why Earmark Tax Payments

By Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

earmark tax payments

Did you know that a taxpayer making a voluntary payment to the IRS can designate to which liability it is credited? The doctrine is called earmarking and it's really useful when a prospective debtor owes taxes for both priority and non priority years.  Absent instructions from the payor, the IRS applies payment to the oldest taxes first, which may well be dischargeable. A taxpayer  who makes … [Continue reading...]

Flush Out Client Misinformation

By Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

After you've gasped and giggled at the misleading bankruptcy information spotlighted here earlier, there is a serious point here:  this sort of tripe creates real work for  bankruptcy lawyers and a very real trap for clients. Incomplete, overstated, inaccurate stuff about bankruptcy is  all over the web, authored  by apparently knowledgeable sources. Your prospects read this … [Continue reading...]

Blog Heaven

By Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

On the off chance you want to read  something other than this blog <g>, may I point you to the ABA's list of candidates for best legal blogs. If I had a 36 hour day, I'd be reading an number of these. My favorite bankruptcy blog, of course, is Credit Slips, the work of a group of law professors which originally included Elizabeth Warren.  I wouldn't mind if you perused Bankruptcy Law … [Continue reading...]

Produce Real Evidence In Bankruptcy Disputes

By Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

galactic flare

More lawyering for faster confirmation of Chapter 13 cases was the advice. The newest judge on our bench called on a room full of bankruptcy attorneys to speed up the flow of cases through his (packed) courtroom by taking discovery.  When an informal request of the objecting creditor doesn't yield the information you need, send discovery, he charged. Let's do the numbers.  Rule 9014 makes … [Continue reading...]