News Topic: TheFloridaBankruptcyLawBlog

Chapter 13 permits debtors to “cram down”, or reduce, the amount of a mortgage on investment property to the property’s current market value. A client recently asked me if the Chapter 13 cram down eliminates past-due mortgage payments and if the “cram ... Read full article

Student loans are almost impossible to discharge in Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The debtor must show actual hardship to discharge a student loans. Courts interpret hardship very strictly. If you are able to work you probably don’t have hardship sufficient to ... Read full article

Often people call me and ask me to help them deal with creditors calling to collect money. I always explain that handling collection calls is not legal work, and they will waste money paying attorneys to respond to collection calls. ... 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

People are afraid of filing bankruptcy. Most of my bankruptcy clients are worried about the effect of bankruptcy on their future, and they think they may never recover financially. Consider this true story. Five years ago I filed bankruptcy for a married ... Read full article

Two things you don’t want if you are filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy. One is a bank account at Wells Fargo, and the other is your name on a joint account with a family member who is not involved in your bankruptcy. Wells Fargo accounts are a problem because, ... Read full article

I saw another example of how sloppy financial and estate planning causes problems in bankruptcy. In this instance, a man took out a $100,000 life insurance policy on his own life. The man died at a time when he and his wife had substantial amounts of  ... Read full article

I receive many questions about credit repair after filing bankruptcy. Credit scoring and reporting is not a bankruptcy law issue; it is more a matter of personal finance. What follows is a Guest Post of Mr. Ed O'Brien who works in the are of personal ... 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

The Chapter 7  means test permits debtors to deduct from income the amounts of the debtor’s monthly mortgage payments. Many people who are walking away  from upside down mortgaged property file bankruptcy because they want to wipe out liability for a ... Read full article

Several months ago a husband and wife consulted with me about filing Chapter 13 bankruptcy. The husband suffered from a terminal disease. He owned an insurance policy on his own life with a $250,000 death benefit. The beneficiary was his wife. Both ... Read full article

There is some confusion about the automatic stay; some debtors don’t anticipate exceptions to the effect of bankruptcy upon their creditor actions. Bankruptcy stops collection of debts, but bankruptcy does not always stop creditor’s ongoing lawsuits to ... Read full article

My last post discussed a bankruptcy seminar which promoted  advantages of court ordered mediation in the context of a Chapter 13 bankruptcy. Here are a some additional interesting points I heard from various seminar speakers (in no particular order) Your ... Read full article

Last month I attended a seminar about mortgage modifications in Chapter 13 bankruptcy. There were several points that warrant a series of blog posts. One speaker compared mortgage mediation in the context of a Chapter 13 bankruptcy with mortgage mediation ... Read full article

Another bankruptcy court decision on reaffirmation of mortgage loans. Bankruptcy debtors have always understood that they had to reaffirm their liability for car loans if they wanted to keep the car through bankruptcy. Many debtors over the years believed ... Read full article

If the debtor and his attorney screw up the debtor’s exemption on his bankruptcy schedules the attorney usually can fix the problem by amending schedules. A bankruptcy court found that the right to amend can expire at some point in the bankruptcy case ... Read full article