The impact on your credit score is the same for a short sale, a deed in lieu, or a foreclosure, a Fair Isaacs representative told bankruptcy lawyers at this weekend’s seminar. It is, he said, the 120 day late payments, which he presumed underlay each of these alternatives, that damages the FICO score. [...]

Senate Bill 2636 (introduced by Harry Reid, D, NV), which contains a provision that would allow a bankruptcy judge to modify a distressed home mortgage loan in chapter 13 bankruptcy, will be up for a vote by the full Senate this week.
Mortgage lenders are fighting this bill, which would help 600,000 Americans save their [...]

One of the changes which became effective January 1, 2008, for the bankruptcy “means test” concerns expenses for health care.  Lines 19B and 31 of Form B22 (chapter 7), and lines 24B and 36 of Form B22C (chapter 13), now constitute a two-part listing for health care expenses, including a minimum allowance you are entitled to [...]

Giving away your money to your relatives before you file your bankruptcy case and lying on your bankruptcy paperwork may land you in federal prison, as this Wichita man learned out Friday.
A Kansas federal court jury found this former car dealer guilty of making a false statement and bankruptcy fraud. The man is awaiting [...]

It happens all the time. Someone files a chapter 13 case, lists their creditors to the best of their knowledge, and all of a sudden it’s a feeding frenzy no different than sharks chumming on something bloody at my favorite surf break. But who are these sharks?
If you liked that post, then try these…Giving Away [...]

It happens quite frequently. A lawsuit is filed, supposedly served on the debtor, no response is filed by the debtor in court(since the sewer service usually never notifies the debtor in the first place), default judgment gets entered, and then the consequences: wage garnishments, bank levies, real estate liens. Does bankruptcy help?
If you [...]

Over the past few years, I find that I receive a lot of questions about the median income part of the means test. Here is an example of a question that I recently received through my Atlanta bankruptcy blog:
We are trying to determine if my unemployed wife can file a Chapter 7 BK on [...]

Countrywide is selling itself at fire-sale prices to Bank of America. It has laid off tens of thousands of employees. Investors in its stock and bonds have been hammered. Homeowners across the country are defaulting on its mortgages and the federal home loan bank is on the hook for many of those [...]

Congress is considering much needed help for homeowners by allowing court supervised modification of home mortgages in bankruptcy court, but the lenders are fighting to stop them. This legislation is important because it gives homeowners facing foreclosure a chance to save their homes by repaying the loans on more favorable terms.
The lenders win [...]

An interesting article written by Patrick Enright of Newsweek.com explores a correlation between evangelical Christians, in the Bible belt and Mormon mountain West, and states with a high concentration of payday lenders. The article examines the results of a state by state count of these two groups conducted by two law school professors for [...]