News Topic: Court Decisions

Here's an interesting bankruptcy court decision about stripping down a partially unsecured mortgage on an investment property in a Chapter 13 case. ... Read full article

A bankruptcy  attorney can try too hard to eliminate his client’s debt; when the attorney abuses the bankruptcy rules he can find himself in trouble with the bankruptcy court. Several attorneys in south Florida were sanctioned for filing frivolous ... Read full article

Chapter 13 bankruptcy can strip a second mortgage from a primary residence if the house is worth less than the first mortgage so that the second mortgage is not secured by any equity. Many homeowners who fall behind in their mortgage payments also have ... Read full article

The 2005 bankruptcy law contains a provision which intends to stop debtors from converting non-exempt funds in to homestead properties otherwise exempt under state law. The Code section provides for loss of homestead exemption to the extent a Chapter 7 ... Read full article

Your homestead property is exempt as long as you intend to maintain the property as your permanent residence. When a homestead owner files bankruptcy he must declare his future intention regarding his homestead property and mortgage. The debtor must ... Read full article

A fraudulent transfers and fraudulent conversions  prior to filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy can be detrimental in two ways. First, the Chapter 7 trustee can reverse the transfer or conversion, take the property back from the transferee (recipient), and sell ... Read full article

Car related expenses are important deductions in the means test analysis. A debtor’s car expenses, including car payments and car operation expenses, often determine whether a prospective bankruptcy debtor passes a means test analysis for bankruptcy ... Read full article

Two married Florida debtors own an upside down homestead property. They are seeking mortgage modification in the hopes of holding on to their home. They file Chapter 7 bankruptcy and do not claim their house as exempt homestead because there is no equity ... Read full article

There are so many reasons to stay away from bankruptcy- here is one more. In state court proceedings a debtor may do anything he wants with his exempt assets. In asset is exempt under Florida law a debtor can transfer it to a family member, put it in a ... Read full article

Florida's  homestead exemption seems simple, but in some respects the exemption involves complicated legal issues. One such issue is the relationship between the Florida homestead protection and a debtor’s status under U.S. immigration laws. There ... Read full article

Florida's  homestead exemption seems simple, but in some respects the exemption involves complicated legal issues. One such issue is the relationship between the Florida homestead protection and a debtor’s status under U.S. immigration laws. There ... Read full article

Car related expenses are important deductions in the means test analysis. A debtor’s car expenses, including car payments and car operation expenses, often determine whether a prospective bankruptcy debtor passes a means test analysis for bankruptcy ... Read full article

There are so many reasons to stay away from bankruptcy- here is one more. In state court proceedings a debtor may do anything he wants with his exempt assets. In asset is exempt under Florida law a debtor can transfer it to a family member, put it in a ... Read full article

Two married Florida debtors own an upside down homestead property. They are seeking mortgage modification in the hopes of holding on to their home. They file Chapter 7 bankruptcy and do not claim their house as exempt homestead because there is no equity ... Read full article

I’ve written recently about some Chapter 7 trustees trying to take or administer  “upside down” homestead properties when the bankruptcy debtor chooses not to claim a homestead exemption because their home has no equity. The debtors purposefully avoid ... Read full article

Debtors may want to amend their exemption plan (on Schedule C) for several reasons during their bankruptcy case. For example, the debtors may find it advantageous to shift their exemption limits from one asset to another asset to make sure preferred ... Read full article

As most know, during the years leading up to the real estate crisis mortgage lenders originated individual home loans and then assigned packages of these loans to investors who converted the packages to mortgage securities. The assignment process involved ... Read full article

Because of substantial decline in Florida real estate values Chapter 13 bankruptcy is commonly used to strip off second and third mortgages from the debtor’s upside down  primary residence. Junior mortgages are not stripped off the residence at start of ... Read full article