In his recent article, “Who says pimpin ain’t easy?” prominent Florida bankruptcy lawyer Chip Parker calls attention to a sweet deal between TCF Financial Corporation and the University of Minnesota allowing  a TCF-issued debit card to act as official student ID.  Parker and the Business Week article to which he refers identify two problematic areas [...]

Foreclosure Assistance Solution’s assets have been frozen by order of a Texas state court, including $13 million it has on deposit with Bank of America, along with the assets of its three insiders, Herb Zerden, Adolfo Quintero, and John Woodruff. A related company J.W.W. Services is another defendant. (Click here for the Texas [...]

My colleague, Kent Anderson, recently posted about protecting yourself from predatory lending. Politicians are starting to take action, too. On Friday, Kansas Attorney General Paul J. Morrison announced the creation of a task force to investigate the reasons behind home foreclosures, including mortgage fraud and subprime lending.
Morrison appointed Kansas Banking Commissioner Tom Thull to [...]

You can stop those unsolicited credit card offers from flooding your mailbox. Just go to www.optoutprescreen.com or call 1-888-5-OPTOUT. Remember that if you signed up when the registry was instituted five years ago then you’ll have to reregister your name on the list. Your registration only lasts for 5 years.

It is called an Adversary Proceeding.
What you want to get in a Chapter 7 is a discharge, which means you do not have to pay the debt. There are exceptions to discharge, and a creditor can sue you in the Bankruptcy Court asking that you still have to pay [...]

Spokesmen for the loan industry claim that there is no need for Congress to alter provisions of the bankruptcy code to prevent foreclosures.  They could not be more wrong.  Witness a recent loan offer on the web:  “180,000 Mortgage for Under $999 a month!”  This intriguing offer from www.lowermybills.com popped up in connection with an [...]

Did you use a credit card prior to filing for bankruptcy? If so, there you need to know that those charges may be excepted from discharge on the grounds that recent use indicates an inability to repay a debt; this is a type of fraud.
But take heart – courts are willing to hold creditors [...]

Congress just passed The College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007.  The name suggests that Congress has finally done something about the building crisis in student loans.  Media sound bites may give this impression, but in reality this is nothing more than a smokescreen hiding those still stoking the fire. 
A recent post (New Student [...]

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) today approved the assumption of the insured deposits of NetBank, Alpharetta, Georgia, by ING Bank, fsb, Wilmington, Delaware. NetBank, with $2.5 billion in total assets and $2.3 billion in total deposits as of June 30, was closed on September 28, 2007 by the Office of Thrift Supervision, and [...]

Let’s say you file for bankruptcy and realize only after the fact that you have a possible claim for a violation of a consumer law – Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, Fair Credit Reporting Act, Truth-In-Lending Act . . . well, you get the picture.
If you fail to amend your bankruptcy papers to disclose that [...]