What New Bankruptcy Lawyers Need To Know: Beyond The Code

Mortgage Servicers In The Crosshairs

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Real property

The sign on my office door should read: Armed and Dangerous Dangerous, anyway, if you are a mortgage servicer. I have a bunch more arrows in my quiver thanks to new bankruptcy rules and new regulations. Most of them relate to home ownership and mortgages. FRBP 3002.1 Sitting on my desk is a notice of fees filed in one of my Chapter 13 cases pursuant to 3002.1. About $500 in fees and … [Continue reading...]

Can Family Court Order Discharged Spouse To Indemnify The Other?

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Family Law in Bankruptcy

File bankruptcy before or after a divorce? It's the classic bankruptcy family law conundrum. We think about about bankruptcy addressing the claims of third parties against the spouses. But consider the impact of a bankruptcy discharge granted to one spouse prior to the resolution of the divorce. What are the options and alternatives for the non filing spouse? Our local Inn of Court … [Continue reading...]

How To Wield Influence And Change The Rules Of The Game

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

Change is coming to the rules of bankruptcy that drive what we do and the forms we must use to do it. We can try to shape the change or just react against it. Or as the traditional wedding service exhorts: speak now or forever hold your peace. Public comment closing Feb. 15 The Rules Committee has posted their recommended changes to these bankruptcy rules and to some official … [Continue reading...]

Domestic Support Obligations: When The Rules We Know Change

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Family Law in Bankruptcy

As bankruptcy lawyers, we'd like to get the world trained to simply halt in their tracks when a bankruptcy is filed and the automatic stay is invoked. It's not so simple when there are family law proceedings afoot. Automatic stay Section 362(a) enjoins continuation of an action against the debtor to recover a claim or the enforcement of a judgment against the debtor or property of the … [Continue reading...]

The Not So Secret Rules Of Bankruptcy Service

By Jay Jump Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

Today's post comes from Jay Jump, Washington bankruptcy attorney and expert on service in bankruptcy cases. When he waxed animated and eloquent on the subject on a list serve we frequent, I roped him into telling us more about service. When is service required?, was the original question. A better question to ask might be ' What is service?'. Answer that and then we can get to when … [Continue reading...]

Non Support Debts In Bankruptcy: Our Options Have Changed

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Family Law in Bankruptcy

Read the case annotations for Section 523(a)(15)of the Bankruptcy Code casually, and you can go really wrong. It's like the phone tree admonition: listen carefully because our options have changed. Before 2005, the dischargeability of non support obligations to former spouse or child incurred by the debtor in the course of divorce might be dischargeable, based on a weighing of the … [Continue reading...]

Loss Mitigation: The Rules Have Changed

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

New federal rules on mortgage servicing can help homeowners avert disaster. But they only help if advocates know the latest. John Rao and Tara Twomey return next week with Part II of a free webinar on the new federal rules on loss mitigation for home mortgages. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued new regs, effective January 10, 2014, implementing … [Continue reading...]

How Bankruptcy Courts Deal With Alimony and Support

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Family Law in Bankruptcy

The starting place for our exploration of bankruptcy and family law is support. Whether it's called alimony, maintenance, or support, any amounts due at the commencement of a bankruptcy case are non dischargeable. Actually, since BAPCPA, it's called a domestic support obligation. It got a statutory definition, as well: (14A) The term “domestic support obligation” means a debt … [Continue reading...]

Bankruptcy And Family Law : Your New Frontier

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice, Family Law in Bankruptcy

Divorce is one of the three major predictors of bankruptcy filing, along with job loss and illness. Families that might have been making it as a single household are now two households. Debts manageable before are now crushing. Or, families weren't making it and the stress over money troubles hastens the end of the marriage. Opportunity in divorce For a bankruptcy lawyer to … [Continue reading...]

Readers Vote With Their Mouse

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

Last time, I listed my 10 favorite Bankruptcy Mastery posts from 2013. Just for fun, I went back and looked at the 2013 traffic numbers for the top 10 Mastery posts, by readership. The two lists do not share a single post! What you read and hopefully found useful was an entirely different set of posts from my list. Now, the traffic numbers take in all posts since Mastery started in … [Continue reading...]

The Best of Bankruptcy Mastery in 2013

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

Let's have some retrospective before we look forward to bankruptcy lawyering in 2014. Here are my picks for my 10 favorite Mastery posts for 2013: Business Bankruptcy and the Bingo Effect- flushing out business creditors your client is oblivious to Untangling the Converted Case- what you need to know and what you need to tell the client Exceptions to Bankruptcy Discharge Not in Our … [Continue reading...]

What Price Silence?

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

Read any good orders lately? I read a not-so-good order yesterday. It affirmed sanctions against debtor's counsel for advising the client to remain silent in the face of a Chapter 13 confirmation order to disclose. That sent me off to read through the standard order confirming plan in the Northern District. I was not keen to see my name in the advance sheets in that context. I … [Continue reading...]

The Trick To Getting All Pending Actions To Bankruptcy Court

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

Don't overlook the ability to keep your client and any litigation that you want or need to go forward post petition together, in bankruptcy court. You can keep them together by removing pending state court actions to bankruptcy court. I say "bankruptcy court" because that's almost inevitably where the case, removed according to statute to the district court, will end up. Removal will … [Continue reading...]

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