What New Bankruptcy Lawyers Need To Know: Beyond The Code

Are You A Potted Plant?

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

Brendan Sullivan famously explained his role as an attorney in the Iran-Contra hearings by declaring that he was "not a potted plant", but the witness' attorney. "I'm the lawyer. That's my job." Sullivan was defending his repeated objections to questions asked of his client: that was his job. I, similarly, see my job as a bankruptcy attorney as pushing my clients to reexamine … [Continue reading...]

Eyes and Ears In The Courtroom

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

His matter had been called and disposed of earlier in the Chapter 13 calendar. Yet the young lawyer continued to sit in the courtroom, listening, watching and making notes. Finally I leaned over and asked if he had another matter on the calendar. No, he replied, I'm just taking it all in. That attitude, coupled with common sense and energy, will make him a sterling bankruptcy lawyer, very … [Continue reading...]

Can The McCourts Dodge A Bullet In Dodger Bankruptcy?

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

The Dodgers' bankruptcy filing is titillating, involving big time sports, a feud between team owner McCourt and baseball commissioner Selig, and the messy divorce centered around the Dodgers as marital property. We'll all get a primer on Chapter 11's as we watch the first day motions and the motions to incur enough additional debt to make payroll this week. But the issue that has me … [Continue reading...]

Cash Collateral Can Crater Bankruptcy Cases And Careers

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

Want to make a bankruptcy judge go ballistic? It's easy: demonstrate ignorance or indifference to cash collateral. If you are saying, what's cash collateral, you need to read further or learn to walk over molten lava. Cash collateral is essentially the output of property subject to the security interest of a creditor: rents, offspring, dividends, etc. The Code (you knew I'd get to the … [Continue reading...]

Ring Around Bankruptcy Law: Don’t Fall Down

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

I read it on the Internet: it must be so. Or not. I found another Victoria Ring blooper this week, thanks to a friend on her email list. Ms. Ring, a paralegal who trains other paralegals (and lawyers, I fear) delightedly tells her LinkedIn group that debtors in California can not only cram down the mortgages on their homes, but they can reduce the monthly payments consistent with the altered … [Continue reading...]

Watch Out For The Ripple Effects of Bankruptcy

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Before filing

No man, and the rare bankruptcy debtor, is an island. He or she comes with financial connections to family, former spouses, and partners of various sorts. The challenge for bankruptcy counsel is to identify those interconnected others and to advise the debtor of the consequences of the filing on those he cares about. Real estate The trustee's power to sell co owned property found in … [Continue reading...]

Beware Predatory Lenders In Sheep’s Clothing

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

Just when you thought mortgage lender behavior couldn't get more odious or indifferent, they prove you wrong. Yesterday a mortgage modification for clients currently in a confirmed Chapter 13 plan appeared on my desk. The plan is several years old and the mortgage arrears were about $5000. The lender sought relief from stay over what turned out to be a one payment delinquency and the bank's … [Continue reading...]

Get The Tools You Need

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

You filed the case. If you're asking, " Now, what do I do?", join me for a lunch and learn series this summer. We'll pack your tool kit with ten essential skills a newish bankruptcy practitioner needs to have to survive clients, creditors and judges. All before Labor Day. The sessions are going to be presented by webinar, each Tuesday at 1 pm PDT starting June 28th. They'll be recorded … [Continue reading...]

The Electronic Shortcut To Perdition

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

Didn't someone wise say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions? So, my subject today is the need to have the client's actual signature on each document filed with the court. It should be obvious and go without saying. Yet the point apparently needs to be made. The observations of colleagues in the trenches suggest that newcomers and those seduced by the electronic ease of ECF … [Continue reading...]

Pick Bankruptcy, Take Care of The Tax

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

The rule that Uncle Sam comes first, in bankruptcy, can be a life saver, even if the debtor is going to lose everything in the process. I was brainstorming with a colleague about his client who was about to suffer a huge judgment in state court. There were virtually no other creditors that made bankruptcy otherwise appropriate and the judgment might well be non dischargeable. There was a … [Continue reading...]

Five Reasons To Break Up Couples

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

Consider that your job as a bankruptcy attorney may be to separate married couples. Huh, you say? Doesn't the traditional wedding ceremony include the charge that "what God has joined together, let no man put asunder"? (I'll let you know more when I've Googled "asunder"). But I suggest that although the code permits married couples to file bankruptcy together, it certainly does not require … [Continue reading...]

Are You Throwing Your Bankruptcy Client To The Predators?

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Tax

Behind every IRS tax audit lurks the state taxing authority. Fail to give the state its due, and the tax in question may be non dischargeable. I had to dredge this tidbit from memory last week when we were looking over the tax transcript for a client who had been audited by the IRS and assessed a whopping tax bill. To his good fortune, that newly assessed tax will be … [Continue reading...]

The Bankruptcy Thigh Bone Is Connected To The Hip Bone

By Cathy Moran, Esq. Filed Under: Bankruptcy Practice

The entire mass of information in the bankruptcy schedules is interconnected in ways our clients don't always perceive. However, if they don't get the interconnection, they may get a rude surprise. I have a list of Do's and Don'ts that I give clients at the conclusion of our initial consultation. Got more evidence this week that they don't read it and, even if they read, they don't think or … [Continue reading...]

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