Do you recognize your client’s tale of woe with prior professionals or not-so-professionals as signs of an incipient asset? A new bankruptcy lawyer was telling me about his client’s dealings with a loan modification lawyer he called a fraudster. That relationship resulted in a near foreclosure on the client’s home while the prior lawyer was […]
Having “The Talk” With Bankruptcy Clients
Are you prepared to boldly go where no outsider has gone before and challenge the client about keeping the house? It seems as taboo a subject as the mechanics of sex, but we as bankruptcy lawyers should be saying openly that maybe keeping the house is not the right route. We like to deliver for […]
What, Me Worry?
Do you think I worry about these issues too much? the rookie bankruptcy lawyer asked me. The issue was exemption planning and the question was whether instituting an IRA and funding it for the current year before filing was a transfer, and if so, would it be objectionable to a Chapter 7 trustee. We went […]
Newbie Summer Reading: Dewsnup
Ever wonder why we can’t strip off unsecured consensual liens in Chapter 7? Meet Mrs. Dewsnup who filed Chapter 7 and sought to reduce the claim of a junior secured lender on a piece of Utah farmland to the value of the portion of the land available to secure the mortgage. Mrs. Dewsnup went 0-4, […]
Bankruptcy Estate & The Realtor’s Open Escrow
How can bankruptcy trustee’s demand the debtor’s real estate commission from escrows open when the bankruptcy case is filed? Twice this month, I’ve watched debtors and their counsel surprised by the turnover demand of Chapter 7 trustees for the proceeds of a real estate transaction pending when the case commencement, but closing weeks after the […]
When Delaying The Discharge May Benefit The Debtor
Ever read, much less used, FRBP 4004(c)(2)? Have to say I’d done neither until Judge Christopher Klein mentioned it at a bankruptcy seminar earlier this year. He told the group that he had learned about it from a pro per who cited it to him in a dispute in a Chapter 7. So what’s this […]
Means Test Double Checks
How do the means test health care numbers relate to the same expenses on I and J? Three of us sat around the table struggling with the means test in a converted case, trustee objections to confirmation of a Chapter 13, and my conviction that a single mother, even getting help from family, should not […]
