It’s tax season and tax myths are everywhere. Know what the most dangerous one is? If you can’t pay the tax on the return, you’ll escape collection action if you keep a low profile by not filing the return. I hear it repeatedly, each year, year after year. And it’s wrong, over and over. Wrong…
Despite BAPCPA, the 2005 “reform” that made bankruptcy more complex and more expensive, consumer bankruptcy is working fairly well in Northern California. The bar has learned to navigate the new law, shuffle the additional forms and avoid the events of “automatic dismissal”. We only need one little change to the law to make relief from…
The letter N, in my Bankruptcy Alphabet, stands for Nondischargeable.? These are the debts that simply don’t go away, even when you get a bankruptcy discharge. Family support heads the list of nondischargeable debts, at least figuratively.? Whether it’s called child support, alimony, maintenance, or a domestic support obligation, the debtor’s obligation to pay…
Individuals with matters before the state courts of California have an updated resource in the Self Help Center. The information here can be either good background if you have a legal problem or a treasure-trove if you expect to represent yourself in court. It even includes a section on bankruptcy, as part of the materials…
Cathy Moran was again named a Super Lawyer in Bankruptcy for Northern California in 2011 for the fifth year in a row. This is pretty heady stuff, Cathy was heard to admit. Image courtesy of Xurble
One of the thorniest problems I’m confronting in the Great Recession is what advice to offer to those who are self employed only because there is no option. In the past year, I’ve seen half a dozen folks whose small business isn’t really making it, and in better times, I would have urged them to…
Rep. Ryan’s proposal that Medicare be replaced with a voucher system for elders to buy private insurance sends shudders down my spine, for the very reason that we’ve been talking about this week at Money Health Central:? financial literacy.? Ryan’s has a lovely idea that elders will be informed and prudent shoppers for medical insurance;?…
See? bankruptcy’s Form B-22 stripped of its secrets, in public, no less. Bankruptcy attorneys, new and not so new, are invited to a three hour workshop on the means test on March 26th in Mountain View. This is likely the last time I will do this class live; an attorney who saw the previous class…
A newly appointed judge said the nicest thing in his new career was not having to be an advocate anymore.? What?? That’s what I love about being a lawyer. Sure, there are some times when you don’t have the best facts or you don’t share your client’s point of view on what the outcome should…
Susanne Robicsek’s post on the futility of keeping a home through bankruptcy brought to mind Professor Brent White’s paper on the use by government and financial counselors of fear and shame to keep people paying on mortgages on underwater homes. White cites a litany of messages from apparently credible sources who chant that a foreclosure…
