Bankrupt Boys’ Music School May Reach Out to Taylor Swift

This week on The Broke and the Beautiful, a bankrupt boarding school wants to call on Taylor Swift for help, and a study finds nearly one of six NFL players file for bankruptcy. Also, actress Kelly Rutherford spoke out about the custody battle that led to her bankruptcy.

The American Boychoir School filed for bankruptcy last week, and now it’s trying to figure out ways to shake it off, including calling on singer Taylor Swift for help. According to the Times of Trenton, the New Jersey music school, a private boarding school for boys in grades four through eight, needs $350,000 to stay open for the rest of the year. The school reported assets of less than $50,000 and debts of $500,000 to $1 million in its bankruptcy petition. American Boychoir was founded in 1937 and seeks to move ahead with “a distinctively American voice [of] the one-thousand-year-old boychoir school tradition,” according to its website. It also inspired the 2014 independent film “Boychoir,” starring Dustin Hoffman, Kathy Bates, Josh Lucas and Debra Winger, according to the Times. A representative of the school didn’t return an emailed request for comment Friday on whether anyone had reached out to Ms. Swift.

Bankruptcy Beat is no stranger to football stars who file for bankruptcy. This week, Real Time Economics noted (and we cross-posted) that a lot of NFL players file bankruptcy. In fact, nearly one in six players file for bankruptcy within 12 years of retiring, according to a paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. The paper, which noted that players’ earnings don’t affect bankruptcy rates, collected data on about 2,000 NFL-drafted players from between 1996 and 2003.

Former “Gossip Girl” actress Kelly Rutherford filed for bankruptcy because of a custody battle with ex-husband Daniel Giersch, who ended up retaining custody of the couple’s two children. This week, she spoke out about losing her latest court battle to return her children from France, where they live with Mr. Giersch. “I know it’s not right,” she told ABC News (h/t Fox News). “Everyone knows it’s not right,” she added. Mr. Giersch’s lawyer told ABC News that “Daniel Giersch continues to protect the children from any negativity and therefore will continue to not engage in any of these unfortunate and false media fabrications.” At the time of her bankruptcy filing in 2013, Ms. Rutherford had about $2 million in debts, most of which stemmed from the custody battle.

Write to Melanie Cohen at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @MelanieLisa