Bankruptcy Blogs

The Bankruptcy Judges of the Western District of Texas

02/28/23

The Western District of Texas crosses two time zones, has a population of 7.6 million and contains 93,000 square miles.  It is larger than the State of Oklahoma but smaller than the State of New Mexico. It contains the 7th, 11th and 24th largest cities in the United States (San Antonio, Austin and El Paso respectively). Since the Bankruptcy Code was adopted, the Western District has been served by 12 judges.  The judges of the Western District have come from San Antonio, Houston, Waco and El Paso.

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Grammar Dooms Innocent Spouse in Non-Dischargeability Case

02/23/23

While we often recite that bankruptcy is for the honest but unfortunate debtor, a new case from the Supreme Court shows that getting into bed or business with the wrong person can lead to a non-dischargeable debt for an innocent spouse. The case is No. 21-908, Bartenwerfer v. Buckley, which you can find here.

What Happened

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The Texas Two-Step's New Key

02/21/23

In the wake of the Third Circuit's LTL Management decision many commentators wrote off the Texas Two-Step as dead. Turns out it's not, it's just playing out in a different key with a new filing in SDTX.

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Job Opportunity -- Executive Director of National Consumer Bankruptcy Rights Center

02/17/23

With Tara Twomey's selection as the new head of the Executive Office of U.S. Trustee, the National Consumer Bankruptcy Rights Center (NCBRC) is seeking a new director. The NCBRC helps shape consumer bankruptcy law, as it did for many years under Twomey's leadership. This is an opportunity for someone else to do the same.

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Debt-based driving restrictions: new resources

02/06/23

Professor Kate Elengold and UNC Law 2L Michael Leyendecker have just posted very useful reports for no charge on the Social Science Research Network.

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The New Usury

02/03/23

I have a new paper up on SSRN. It's called The New Usury: The Ability-to-Repay Revolution in Consumer Finance. It's a paper that's been percolating a while--some folks might remember seeing me present it (virtually) at the 2020 Consumer Law Scholars Conference, right as the pandemic was breaking out. Here's the abstract:

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#PublicDebtIsPublic and #DebtCeilingIsStupid

01/31/23

What could possibly trigger me enough to break a two-year blogging hiatus? A sudden burning desire to consider the difference among budget accountability, debt accountability, and the inane, moronic, irrational, exploding human appendix ****show that is the debt ceiling.

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