Monthly Archives: July 2012

Bankruptcy court litigation favors contractors over homeowners

By doug | Published: July 23, 2012

If you hire a contractor to remodel your house, and the workers show up on expensive Harley-Davidson motorcycles, that’s a good sign that the company is solvent enough to finish the job, right? Wrong. And it led to a long bout of ultimately losing litigation when the contractors filed for personal bankruptcy. Massachusetts chief bankruptcy […]

Posted in Bankruptcy News, Real estate | Comments closed

Stripping liens in bankruptcy court . . . or maybe avoiding them

By doug | Published: July 20, 2012

If you are a debtor in bankruptcy court, stripping could be a very profitable thing . . . stripping off liens from your property, that is. But it might not be the only bankruptcy strategy to get rid of pesky liens. Avoidance could work well, too. California bankruptcy law guru Cathy Moran has written a […]

Posted in Practical tips, Secured loans | Comments closed

Are you allowed to keep credit cards after filing bankruptcy?

By doug | Published: July 19, 2012

In the old days, some trustees asked bankruptcy debtors to cut up their credit cards right in front of them at the meeting of creditors in the bankruptcy case. You don’t see much of that anymore. As with so much of our lives, technology has changed the game. As Jacksonville attorney Chip Parker sets out […]

Posted in Credit cards | Comments closed

Should your bankruptcy lawyer be working for a debt-relief group?

By doug | Published: July 18, 2012

Here’s a situation that I see coming up more and more in Massachusetts lately, sometimes with some ugly results: debtors who turn to “non-profit” debt-relief groups who “provide” them with a lawyer who prepares a bankruptcy case for them. So what’s wrong with that, you ask? First, the quality of the representation is usually extremely […]

Posted in Practical tips | Comments closed

The most useless bankruptcy form

By doug | Published: July 17, 2012

Here’s my nomination for the most useless bankruptcy form that has to be routinely submitted to a court during the course of a bankruptcy case: The “Chapter 7 Statement of Intention.” In a Chapter 7 case, this is where the debtor makes a declaration of what he proposes to do about his secured debts — […]

Posted in Practical tips, Secured loans | Comments closed

Bankruptcy judge unearths useful exemptions for life insurance policies

By doug | Published: July 13, 2012

You can lean a lot from reading the latest bankruptcy opinions. About bankruptcy law, to be sure, but often also about little explored areas of state laws. Take life insurance, for an example. Term life insurance — the kind that simply pays a benefit when someone dies. Except in the case of a suicide, of […]

Posted in Exemptions | Comments closed
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