Anyone interested in attorneys fees? Are you filing adversaries and motions to collect money from creditors and other miscreants? Then it’s worth looking at two snippets about attorneys fees that have floated across my radar screen. FRCP 54 One of the participants at the Litigating on a Shoe String roundtable at the NACBA convention pointed […]
Untangling The Converted Bankruptcy Case
Conversion to Chapter 7 from Chapter 13 usually comes amid some sort of train wreck. The debtor has defaulted on plan payments, decided to surrender the house, or even got a loan modification that allows him to keep the house. Often, there is pressure to convert the case before it is dismissed. In the bustle, […]
Bankruptcy & Divorce: A Disruption In The Force
When bankruptcy law and family law intersect, the result can be liberating or disruptive, depending on the timing of a bankruptcy filing and the goals of the parties. An infinite number of combinations lead to infinite different outcomes. The variables start with whether bankruptcy occurs before or after status is altered; before or after the […]
Unfair Loan Modification Practices Rejected By 9th Circuit
Promising a loan modification and failing to deliver, after pocketing trial mod payments, isn’t fair, said the 9th Circuit in Oskoui. And if it isn’t fair, it can be actionable under California’s Unfair Competition Law (B&P 17200). Not to mention constituting a breach of contract. Thus, there do seem to be some limits on […]
Shadow Players May Have Support Claims In Bankruptcy
What we know so far about domestic support obligations in bankruptcy is that they are non dischargeable and the bankruptcy court has the last word as to what is and is not support. But we just scratched the surface in looking at support when we considered obligations from one spouse to another. Debts owed to […]
Getting Means Test Tax Projections Right
The means test tax deduction offers fertile ground for passing the means test. But mention tax calculations to a bankruptcy attorney and 7 out of 10 freeze on the spot. I’m not a tax attorney, they retort. That’s right, but, if you are a bankruptcy attorney, that doesn’t relieve you from knowing enough tax to […]
When Chapter 13 Debtors Run Amok
We’ve had a string of them…. [Hint: in a small practice, a “string” means “three. ” ] But three clients in the past month with confirmed Chapter 13 plans have contracted to sell their homes without mentioning it to us, their attorneys. The degree of chaos varied: inadequate time to get approval of the sale from the […]
