Now retired Judge Jaroslavsky popped this question on a room full of new bankruptcy lawyers: what’s the first rule for filling out a legal form? An answer from the floor suggested “make sure you have the most recent version”, which I thought was pretty good. But the judge had something else in mind: know the […]
The Means Test: Where The Blind Lead The Sighted
The people who sit in judgment on the adequacy of your b-22 and your means test calculation have never prepared one. What other endeavor can you name where the arbiters are utterly without experience? This first came up for me when counsel for a Chapter 13 trustee recounted something I’d told him months ago ( […]
The $1000 Word
Word choice in a fee application cost a Chapter 13 lawyer $1000 yesterday. We all know about forbidden words; most of us even know some. Would you have guessed that “prepare” was one of them? I was waiting my turn in court, on a fee app no less, when the fee application of a well […]
Beware The Taxes That Follow Foreclosure
Who cares about stopping the foreclosure, it’s stopping the tax that results from foreclosure. It’s a brand new perspective for me as I counsel families with homes at risk of foreclosure. Given mortgage debt that exceeds today’s value of the property, a foreclosure will result in a 1099 for the difference between the loan balance […]
The Real Truth About Bankruptcy Lawyers & Clients
We live in two different worlds, the client and the bankruptcy attorney. “Creditors”, for debtors, means those folks who send a monthly bill, and who call if you are late. “Creditors”, for bankruptcy lawyers, means everyone who has a claim of any kind against the client. In his Fundamentals of Bankruptcy Practice for newcomers last […]
End Run On Chapter 7 Trustee
I found one more reason to file 13 when there MAY be non exempt equity. I tout Chapter 13 as the better choice when there are issues of insider preferences, transfers that might be found constructively fraudulent, or where there are small amounts of equity in assets. It’s better, I think, that the debtor propose […]
The Price Is Not Right
Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. The value of the debtor’s stuff is colored by their ownership. Get a truer value by asking the client to imagine buying a replacement, just like the one he owns now. Clients cling to old or comfortable ideas of what their personal property is worth. […]
