Lynn LoPucki is a Professor at UCLA Law School.  He is also the author and designer of fascinating website called “Bankruptcy Visuals“.  The site does a fantastic job of laying out the bankruptcy process in a technically accurate fashion by paying careful attention to the interaction between the United States Bankruptcy Code (Title 11 of [...]

Popularity: 10% [?]

Many many years ago, (actually during the Spanish -American War), Congress began taxing long distance or bundled telephone use. Many many years later, the last court case fighting the telephone excise tax was done and the Court decided that Congress needed to return the money taken over the years. How to [...]

Popularity: 8% [?]

The Atlanta newspapers blared headlines this past week about a mounting foreclosure “crisis” in Georgia.   The news stories quoted statistics from a California company called RealtyTrac showing 12,602 July foreclosures in Georgia a jump of 75% from June to July.
On Sunday, October 13, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution acknowledged that the RealtyTrac numbers were flawed
If you liked [...]

Popularity: 13% [?]

If you use search engines like Google and Yahoo to educate yourself about bankruptcy information, you will come across a number of web sites from lawyers (like me and my colleagues on the Bankruptcy Law Network) that offer online bankruptcy information. A list of the websites from lawyers who contribute to this blog [...]

Popularity: 10% [?]

Anyone who has listened to the radio lately, perhaps while driving a car or doing laundry, has heard ads that go something like this: “Don’t file for bankruptcy — call us.  We are a nonprofit company called Blah Blah Debt Blah, we will get you out of debt in no time!”  My favorite refrain in [...]

Popularity: 9% [?]

There have been several blog posts on the Bankruptcy Law Network about bankruptcy mis-information on the Internet.  Online bankruptcy information is not necessarily true simply because someone publishes a statement or opinion on a web site or blog.
If you did not know this already, there are many web sites and blogs that exist in cyberspace [...]

Popularity: 9% [?]

Occasionally, I get a call or an email requesting copies of paperwork from a bankruptcy client who I represented fifteen or twenty years ago. Sometimes this paperwork is needed as part of a mortgage loan refinance and sometimes it is needed to help clear up a credit reporting issue. How do you obtain [...]

Popularity: 12% [?]

Where was Fair Isaac when subprime mortgage collapsed?  Aren’t its credit scores reliable?  Ah, er, hmm - It’ll get back to us.
Let’s look at a September 19, 2007 article from Forbes (no link available; paid subscription required).  Fair Isaac’s 01/07 study concluded that a high scoring borrower with a no money down mortgage is just [...]

Popularity: 3% [?]

“People with six inquiries or more on their credit reports are eight times more likely to declare bankruptcy than people with no inquiries on their reports.”  This is from Fair Isaac, the creators of the FICO credit scoring process.  So consumer-initiated credit inquiries, like applying for a gasoline sponsored card to save five cents per [...]

Popularity: 3% [?]

This is a continuation of the original post entitled “If I Can’t Pay My Bills, How Can I Afford to Pay My Bankruptcy Attorney“.
As was discussed in the original post cited above, it is frequently difficult for those in need of bankruptcy relief to afford to retain a bankruptcy attorney.  The original post stopped at [...]

Popularity: 9% [?]