You should treat your bankruptcy lawyer with a great deal of respect…if they deserve it. Yes, I am a bankruptcy lawyer. Every day people who never wanted to even consider filing for bankruptcy come to see me. Besides being reluctant to be in my office, they walk in all stressed out. [...]

My bankruptcy client, Sharon, died after fighting breast cancer valiantly for two years. What happens to her bankruptcy case now?
She was a debtor in chapter 13 bankruptcy paying back her debts, mostly credit cards, as best she could. She paid her plan payments faithfully until the end.
Her husband called me and asked what would [...]

The recent Lodi bankruptcy case illustrates Massachusetts law on tenancies by the entireties.   Nickless v. Lodi (In re Lodi), 2007 Bankr. LEXIS 3075 (Bankr. D. Mass. 2007).
A tenancy by the entireties is a legal fiction designed to protect marital assets in states having English, and not Spanish, roots (most eastern and central states; others [...]

Earlier I posted about a very recent case allowing a trustee to sell a home jointly owned by a debtor and nondebtor spouse despite the Massachusetts tenancy by the entireties. The case ruled that there was no significant hardship to the nondebtor owner from the sale. A hardship will lead to a different [...]

The case of Nickless v. Lodi (In re Lodi), 2007 Bankr. LEXIS 3075 (Bankr D MA, 09/12/07) (Rosenthal, J.) presented the not-uncommon situation of a debtor and his then-wife refinancing their home, with the nondebtor wife using the proceeds to pay off her $11,000 car loan and keep another $9,000. The husband filed bankruptcy three [...]

A Chapter 7 trustee can sell the MA home of a married debtor and distribute the proceeds despite the objection of a nondebtor spouse, the nondebtor spouse’s own homestead, and the existence of an unterminated tenancy by the entirety.
The debtor only claimed the $15,000 federal exemption, believing there was only $8,000 equity at the time [...]

One question we’re often asked is whether a client can keep their jewelry if they file for bankruptcy. The answer is “usually,” but, as with most things, it depends on the details.
If you own the jewelry free and clear, meaning that it isn’t security for a loan, the answer depends on how much it’s worth [...]

Two-Cycle billing is an underdisclosed billing scheme employed by the large purveyors of credit cards like Bank of America and Capital One. The manner of its operation serves to reward consumer behavior which results in ever growing credit card balances from month to month, while penalizing consumers who try to shrink what they owe [...]

Bankruptcy and divorce law do not always play well together.  Here’s how it looks after the October, 2005 reforms.
Child custody and visitation:  Not affected at all by bankruptcy.  No change from prior law.  (Bankruptcy is only about money, folks.) 
If you liked that post, then try these…BAPCPA and the Rule of Unintended Consequences by Brett Weiss, [...]

Student Loan debt has risen almost geometrically over the past decade or so.  Illustrative of this fact is a statistic that tells us that private student loan debt rose 734% to  $14 billion between 1994 and 2004.  Student loans can present a vexing problem in bankruptcy, particularly in Chapter 13 cases where debtors are prevented from [...]