bankruptcy

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that a debtor in bankruptcy is not allowed to take a deduction on the so-called means test for ownership costs for a vehicle, unless they are actually buying or leasing a vehicle. What does this mean?

Introduction

I was sitting with a client in my Houston law office the other day, finishing up a Chapter 7 bankruptcy signing appointment with a woman.

It’s a lot of paperwork, about 40 pages of financial information about her, and the review and signing of all the bankruptcy documents takes about two hours. As we go through it, I tried to make her feel better by saying, “this is a lot of paperwork, isn’t it?”