Earlier this summer, the 4th Circuit joined an increasing list of federal appeals courts to confirm that debtors need not include Social Security income in their Chapter 13 plan filings. In In re Mort Ranta, the 4th Circuit agreed with the 9th Circuit and others in highlighting that the 2005 bankruptcy reforms passed by Congress…

The recent economic downturn created, among many other problems, an abundance of people with many financed assets on which they were “underwater” or “upside down,” meaning that the outstanding balance on the loan was greater than the current value of the asset itself. One possible way to address assets upon which you are upside down…

In a noteworthy reversal of course from a 2008 decision, the 9th Circuit sitting en banc decided in In re Flores that a debtor couple’s Chapter 13 repayment plan must last at least five years, rejecting the couple’s proposed three-year plan. Even though the couple had no projected disposable income, because the couple had an…

Avoiding the Roadblocks to Rebuilding Your Financial Profile After Bankruptcy For many Americans, bankruptcy has served as an essential fresh start in their financial lives. Completing your bankruptcy procedure is only the beginning, however. Today, rebuilding one’s financial profile after a bankr uptcy is more manageable than in the past. As Roger M. Whelan of…

A debtor’s significant mischaracterization of a six-figure debt ultimately placed him on the hook for repaying the debt after a bankruptcy court, and the Ninth Circuit, concluded that the debt was non-dischargeable. Even though the attorney who represented the creditor knew about the debt, the debtor remained obliged to repay, because the lawyer found out…

The extreme effects of the most recent economic recession have many people facing foreclosure on their homes, as the properties’ values plummeted and the property owners’ incomes declined, or dried up altogether. After an extended period of limiting the volume of foreclosure actions, or stopping altogether, mortgage lenders are again pursuing foreclosures more aggressively. Homeowners…

9th Circuit Allows an Employee to Pursue Discrimination Action In a noteworthy departure from the rulings of other federal circuit courts, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals gave a county employee the green light to sue her employer for discrimination, even though she originally failed to disclose the lawsuit in her Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing.…

Many of us dream of living the life of the rich and famous. With all that money, what problems could we possibly have? Well, one look at the tabloid magazines will tell us a different story, but for those of us facing mounting debt, trading in our money problems for tabloid problems might not sound…

In a landmark decision, the United States Supreme Court held in U.S. v. Windsor, that the Defense of Marriage Act or DOMA as it is commonly referred to, is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. Under the Defense of Marriage Act, marriage was defined for all federal purposes as the…

I recently did a blog about discharging student loans in bankruptcy. In that blog, I noted a 9th Circuit Bankruptcy Appellate Panel decision in which one of the Panel Judge’s called on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to come up with a more workable legal standard for discharging student loans in bankruptcy. Specifically, the…