Junior lenders who consent to a short sale of underwater homes are barred from seeking to collect anything further from sellers under a newly enacted California statute. The law, signed on July 15, 2011, becomes effective immediately.? It applies to properties, held by individuals, comprising 1-4 residential units.? Senate Bill 458 accords the same restrictions…
Other professionals should know better than to? advise people about the workings of bankruptcy.? And if they don’t know better, they should be made to pay, in? some exquisitely painful way, for the harm they inflict. The terrified client in my office was told by her accountant that if she filed Chapter 13 to save…
Gerri Detweiler kicks off a six part series on dealing with a home worth less than you owe at Credit.com.? Check her out this week for another point of view on this oh-too-common problem. I’m fond of her piece especially since she includes my lament that I spend my days talking people out of houses….
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…
In the tug o war of which creditor to pay, why is it that credit cards win over taxes and child support? I’m accustomed to clients who pay creditors rather than provide for their own health care, emergency fund, or retirement.? That’s taking care of commitments to others before self. But I haven’t figured out…
Californians may enjoy an increase in the exemption for a principal residence and compensating increases in the exemptions available under CCP 703 to Californians filing bankruptcy.? The bill under consideration , AB 929, will not, however, increase the wildcard, or grubstake, exemption in the CCP 703 scheme. A bill to again revise California Exemptions, introduced…
Since the Supreme Court’s Lanning decision, there’s been speculation about whether the applicable commitment period portion of the? 9th Circuit’s Kagenveama decision survives.? It lives, according to Judge Pappas? in Montana. Lanning rejected the idea that disposable monthly income at the foot of bankruptcy form? B-22 is binding, at least when there were certain or…
When a Chapter 13 trustee complains that the means test is not easy to administer when only one spouse files, should I be sympathetic?? Here’s what I said recently at ConsiderChapter13.org on that issue. Come on, Madame Trustee, get over it. What is there about BAPCPA that leads you to expect that it or its…
Can you afford to cram down a mortgage when cram down is permitted? Mortgages on a debtor’s home are protected from cram down in Chapter 13 by 1322(b)(2).? Mortgages on any other kind of real estate can be reduced to the value at filing of the collateral securing the debt as of the date of…
Insolvency is one of the exceptions to the rule that you must include cancelled debt in taxable income. The huge difference between the IRS treatment and the way we address insolvency in bankruptcy is that the IRS includes retirement assets in the solvency calculation. The last time I wrote about cancellation of debt and the…
