BankruptcyLawNetwork

Help! My Car Was Repossessed! Can Bankruptcy Help?

08/03/11

    It’s early in the morning and you are just stepping out of the door to go to work and your car is not where you left it!  Oh, no!  You knew that you were a couple of months behind on your car payments and the creditor was calling but you didn’t quite expect this!  [...]

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Bankruptcy Petition Preparers: A Really Bad Idea

08/03/11

  Bankruptcy Petition Preparers.  Should you hire one? Let’s face it.  Folks with financial problems aren’t exactly flush with cash. So it’s tempting to cut corners in purchasing legal advice and to opt for the services of a bankruptcy petition preparer. But as with most things, you get what you pay for. Preparers really can’t–at [...]

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Discharging Payday Loans In Bankruptcy: The Payday Lender Is Not Your Friend!

08/01/11

When you file a Chapter 7 bankruptcy you must list all of your assets and debts.  Unsecured debts are discharged giving you what is often called a Fresh Start. Payday Loans are a form of unsecured debt, although many people believe that these debts are secured. In fact, since the borrower is required to turn over a post-dated check to [...]

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Consumer Wins Big FDCPA Verdict!

08/01/11

    InsideARM, a accounts receiveable management blog reported today that during the past week, a consumer was awardeda $1.26 Million verdict in a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) lawsuit  in New Mexico.  The consumer, a “Lucinda Yazzie”, had brought the lawsuit after the debt collector had attempted twice to garnish wages for a [...]

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Bankruptcy Mortgage Project Launches,Treasure Trove for Practitioners

07/31/11

The National Consumer Law Center has launched the Bankruptcy Mortgage Project, a treasure trove of legal resources about home mortgage issues in consumer bankruptcy cases. The NCLC website collects local rules, forms, general orders and opinions about consumer mortgage issues from the 352 bankruptcy judges in 89 judicial districts in the United States.  It serves [...]

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What are “Exemptions”, Again?

07/31/11

My client asked me this last week as we were going through her final papers for her Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing. I told her the easy way I think of them: property that is exempt from being liquidated by the case trustee.  In my state of New Mexico, you generally can choose between using the [...]

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A Change in Your Financial Situation Does NOT Entitle you to Change the Terms of a Contract

07/29/11

Recently, I have had an influx of potential clients who believe that because their financial situation has taken a turn for the worse, their creditors are required to change the terms of the contract regarding the debt that person owes.  There is no law that I know of, other than bankruptcy, that may possibly change [...]

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The Importance of Credit Counseling – Congress Are You Listening?

07/28/11

As I write this blog, there is still no deal on the Debt Ceiling.  Quite frankly, I was trying to understand exactly how our Government’s accounting system works, and I will say that I am absolutely unable to understand how running a deficit each year is a good thing.  There must be a secret training [...]

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At-Will Contracts Are Not Executory Contracts

07/27/11

Executory contracts get special treatment in bankruptcy.  They are roughly defined as a contract where both parties still have to perform – think lease -  unlike a loan where the lender’s obligations ended when the loan was made. Executory contracts need to be listed in Schedule G, giving notice of the bankruptcy case to the other [...]

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Can I Raise MY Debt Ceiling? Should I?

07/26/11

While Congress and the White House debate raising the debt ceiling of the nation, many of us just plain citizens wonder if we too should borrow more money to get through our hard times.  The questions we need to ask are… can we borrow more? … and … should we borrow more? Lending institutions drastically tightened [...]

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