The signal changes in California foreclosure law in 2021 are bearing unexpected fruit: a bankruptcy filing AFTER the foreclosure auction can save the house for the homeowner.
Under CC 2924m, instead of the foreclosure sale being final at the drop of the auction hammer, now the sale is not final, and the trustee’s deed…
I was the third attorney on this lien avoidance matter. Instead of it being “third time’s the charm”, it came close to being “three strikes and you’re out.” All because of FRBP 7041.
One
This was the set up: original counsel filed a number of lien avoidance actions, including the one against a landlord…
Most lawyers were torn between wincing and laughing when a lawyer filed a brief packed with case authority created out of whole cloth by an AI bot. Meanwhile, a segment of the bar is fretting that we will be replaced by powerful artificial intelligence.
My concern, based on a couple of casual forays into…
Hands up, everyone who has encountered a claim that a debt is non-dischargeable by reason of §523(a)(14). That’s what I thought: nada, or next thing to it.
Despite watching for it, I hadn’t seen one til this year when AmEx filed an adversary in a case in which I was peripherally involved. My copy of…
In a perfectly executed world, clients who do business via an entity like a corporation or LLC would arrive with their business life neatly separated from their personal lives.
However, that’s not the world I practice in. It’s probably not yours, either.
Instead, I have to sleuth out the facts, and compare them to the…
For a system that is supposed to rehabilitate personal finances and set debtors back on their feet, Chapter 13 nationwide is schizophrenic about on- going retirement savings, divided about whether post petition contributions to retirement accounts preclude confirmation of a Chapter 13 plan.
Are 401(k) Contributions Disposable Income Or Not?
Too many courts, in my…
State law insulated a recorded judgment lien from future increases in the homestead exemption. Bankruptcy law trumps that limitation, says the 9th Circuit in Barclay v. Boskoski.
[T]he Bankruptcy Code requires courts to determine the amount of the exemption to whichthe debtor would have been entitled in the absence of the lien at issue
The…
Community property works differently in bankruptcy. I probably don’t have to tell you that.
On the issue of assets and debts, community property is pretty straightforward. All of the community property comes into the estate upon the commencement of a bankruptcy case, even when only one spouse files. §541(a)(2).
Every creditor with a right…
Tax liens in bankruptcy sometimes don’t stand up to close scrutiny, to the delight and profit of bankruptcy debtors. I was reminded of two such instances by the excellent presenters at the NACBA 2021 Workshop.
Lien perfection follows state law
The secret tax lien attaches to all of a taxpayer’s property of any kind, wherever…
Not every expenditure that benefits the debtor’s household or his family is a household expense.
And, if it’s not a household expense, it doesn’t get added to CMI in a single spouse bankruptcy filing.
That’s how the marital adjustment should work.
But it’s not so simple.
Household expense is not an expansive definition
During a NACBA…
