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Feel overwhelmed by the means test? Got new associates who need to become facile with it? Or just need a refresher on the means test, its idiocycrasies and opportunities?

Join Jill Michaux and me for a FREE webinar on the means test, Thursday, March 21, at 10 am, PDT where we tackle the issues on

I’ve long campaigned for compensation of bankruptcy practitioners that recognizes the practitioner’s skill set and the complexities of this practice. Without real-world compensation, bankruptcy can’t compete for legal talent.

Alongside that campaign, I’ve expressed my concern about what Bill Rochelle calls the overlegalization of consumer bankruptcy. I see that in the increasing, and needless in

You know it won’t go well for the creditor in a discharge violation case when the opinion opens by characterizing the debtor as a single mother and registered nurse who discovers her $20K bank balance is now negative.

And sure enough, the debt buyer trying to collect a two-decade-old credit card debt ended up $64,000

The 9th CIr. BAP erected a high bar for the imposition of monetary sanctions against counsel in its recent decision in Franz. Despite some ugly facts and imperfect lawyering, the BAP overturned $5000 in sanctions against a Chapter 13 debtor’s lawyer, finding counsel’s conduct did not rise to a level akin to contempt of court.

The liquidation analysis is central to every form of consumer bankruptcy. Yet too many attorneys think the formula is

Assets minus Secured Debts minus Exemptions = Distributable estate

Not by a long shot. So let’s walk through the elements of a comprehensive liquidation analysis.

You need it if you’re assessing the vulnerability of assets to

Everyone new to bankruptcy needs a guide to this specialized legal realm.

Just as you can’t tell the players without a scorecard, it’s hard to make heads or tails of bankruptcy law when it’s new to you.

Jon Hayes has what you need to tell priorities from the absolute priority rule.  Exemptions from exclusions. Denial

The bankruptcy means test, designed to keep people out of bankruptcy, has a fatal weakness. 

Like so much recently, it’s health care.

Health care, in the future, to be paid before creditors get any money.

It works because, in a logic that only Congress could employ, the means test deducts future expenses from past income.

And, since

What are the consequences of a secured lender’s failure to comply with R. 3002.1 in a prior case when the debtor files again? Significant, it seems.

The issue came before the SD Texas bankruptcy court in Alvarez, No. 22-33889 (Bankr. S.D. Tex. Aug. 9, 2023) when the debtor objected to the mortgage claim of