I recently published an article on RECAP, the Firefox extension that creates a public archive of federal court documents accessed from the PACER system and provided to PACER users without charge.  Many federal courts use the CM/ECF electronic records system to store and manage case records.  PACER is the fee for service system that provides [...]

It costs eight cents per page to look at “public” records in most bankruptcy courts.  With the advent of CM/ECF, the electronic federal court system for managing and storing case files, the Administrative Office of the US Courts has made many of these records accessible to the public through the “Pay Per View” system described [...]

If you are involved in a bankruptcy proceeding you may come across the terms CM, which is an abbreviation for the words Case Management, and ECF, which stands for Electronic Case Filing.  CM/ECF is the computerized case filing and record management system used by the bankruptcy court to maintain and process bankruptcy court case records.
Beginning [...]

Case files in more than 200 Federal Courts, including Bankruptcy Courts, are available over the web for a fee from any personal computer.  The Oregon Bankruptcy court is participating in this program.  PACER, the acronym for Public Access to Court Electronic Records, is the system the courts use to provide this access and it is available to [...]

It is hard, not impossible, to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy. Only government guaranteed loans were protected from discharge before 2005, now student loans from private banks are protected.  To qualify for discharge, payment of a student loan must present an undue hardship to the debtor or a dependant of the debtor.  The exceptions [...]

A bankruptcy reaffirmation agreement is a new promise to pay an old debt.  A reaffirmation agreement is enforceable if it is properly executed and approved by the court.  There can be many reasons to reaffirm a debt.  However, it is important to understand what happens if you reaffirm.
If you reaffirm a debt to one of [...]

Mrs. Brown shot her husband and complained that the decrease in family income after his death made Chapter 13 payments a hardship.  When she requested a discharge without making all the required payments, the bankruptcy judge asked the widow Brown to explain herself.  Since she was unwilling to testify under oath about the shooting, the [...]

Renewed attempts at debt collection following bankruptcy discharge are a serious problem. Aggressive collection agencies buy up old debt for pennies on the dollar, counting on being able to collect some proportion of the debt.
It appears that student loan creditors are now pursing debts previously thought to have been discharged.  Educational Credit Management Corporation (ECMC), [...]

Student loans are not discharged in a bankruptcy proceeding unless repayment of the loan will create an undue hardship for the debtor or the debtor’s dependents.  The bankruptcy code prevents student loan discharge in most cases.
Many courts, including the Oregon bankruptcy court, have adopted a test formulated in 1987 by the Court of Appeals for [...]

Conventional wisdom and prudent financial planning caution against borrowing against a 401(k) retirement account for anything other than emergencies.   A post by Dana Wilkinson on Bankruptcy Law Network similarly urges caution in using 401(k) loans to pay off dischargeable credit card debt.  Now, given last year’s overwhelming decline in investment portfolio value, people who borrowed [...]