There’s often a balloon in bankruptcy and foreclosures soon after Christmas in part because folks “skip a payment” to buy presents. This is never a good idea and now it is even worse.
First, if you want to keep your home, the mortgage comes before virtually everything. I tell my clients it comes before [...]

The mortgage industry has a plan to help people who are already helping themselves. Adjustable rate subprime mortgage borrowers could get more time at low teaser rates — if they can stay current until the deal gets made. The teaser-freezer plan will sound good and accomplish little.
As we have repeatedly reported (here, here, [...]

The mortgage industry and government are scrambling to find ways to stem the tide of subprime disaster. Some solutions will simply not work for enough people to matter and others are just passing the buck to future taxpayers. The best solution remains allowing consumers to modify their mortgages through the bankruptcy process.
If you [...]

Chapter 13 families sometimes need three cars. Having a newer car with debt can be a necessity, not a luxury. And trustees have to be reminded the world is not as simple as we would like, at times.
These are the lessons I draw in a recent case won by our friend Andy Miofsky [...]

As I discussed this week, Congress is seriously considering legislation to allow consumers to modify home mortgages. At the same time Sam Gerdano, the executive director of the American Bankruptcy Institute, threw cold water on the idea in an Associated Press interview. This leaves this long-time ABI member to wonder if the [...]

A bankruptcy court can change the repayment schedule and amount for business property, apartment complexes, vacation homes, cars and boats in Chapter 13. The one thing it can’t change is the thing you need most: Your home mortgage. For the good of borrowers, taxpayers and even mortgage lenders, that should change - now. If you [...]

Applying the means test as written, a St. Louis judge dismissed a debtor who could not repay anything to creditors for a lengthy period of time…because she could hypothetically repay them something eventually. Once again, judges try to make sense of the means test and reach strange results.
In this particular case, a debtor with [...]

Missouri’s wildcard provides additional exemptions to a head of a family for “unmarried dependent children.” Last week, in St. Louis Judge Charles “Sketch” Rendlen III held that “children” includes grandchildren. So fortunately Missouri will continue to recognize that grandkids are children also.

Bankruptcy reform two years ago today was a victory for politicians and lobbyists who had a point to make — and it had nothing to do with improving the law. The craven and the brutal side of politics comes to the fore when Congress works on laws that don’t mean much to them — [...]

Damages from a personal injury (or death) caused by drunk (or drugged) driving, flying or operation of a ‘vessel’ are excepted from discharge. But what if the drunk debtor was driving a horse and buggy? In July, a Fort Wayne bankruptcy court concluded a horse and buggy is not a ‘vessel’ and therefore [...]