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California Homestead Grows With Inflation: Calculating The Homestead Increase

By Cathy Moran

calculating today's California homestead

Calculating California’s homestead reveals the homestead in 2022 is now capped at $626,400. That’s even more generous than the originally enacted $600,000. And it will change next year. To calculated the current homestead exemption, you need an armful of data (and a bit of math). Because, the new law provided not only for a bigger […]

Filed Under: Strictly California Tagged With: 2022, exemption, homestead

What To Disclose In Bankruptcy Papers

By Cathy Moran

If the headline drew you in, like the Geico gecko, you can complain you’ve been duped. There’s no decision involved: in bankruptcy papers, you disclose everything. Period. Disclosure is the price of the bankruptcy discharge. Shortchange the system by leaving out inconvenient facts and you risk both the omitted asset and the discharge. Understand the […]

Filed Under: How bankruptcy works

Bankruptcy And Divorce Collide: The Threatened Filing

By Cathy Moran

My soon-to-be ex threatens to file a bankruptcy tomorrow and get me kicked out of the house. The frantic voice on the phone wanted to know whether he could do that in California. Or better, how he could be stopped from upsetting the pending divorce through the bankruptcy courts. Welcome to the volatile collision between bankruptcy and […]

Filed Under: Family Law, Featured Tagged With: variables

Bankruptcy and “Ruining your credit score”

By Cathy Moran

No matter how precarious their financial situation, almost every client I meet thinks bankruptcy will ruin their credit score. Not only ruin it, but damage it for all time, precluding normal life after bankruptcy. Some resolve to stagger along, burdened with their debt and the fear of escaping debt. So, my encounter with a financial […]

Filed Under: Consumer Rights

New Bankruptcy Trends From An Old Hand

By Cathy Moran

bankruptcy trends

I’m seeing a real change in the people seeing me about filing bankruptcy. Used to be, the problem was credit card debt, unemployment, or divorce. A surprising trend over the past six months is developing. I acknowledge the sample size is small.  Statistically, you can challenge the significance, but here are the trends. My office is […]

Filed Under: Featured, True Stories Tagged With: 2017

What Happens To My Stuff In Different Bankruptcy Chapters

By Cathy Moran

Chapter 7 v. 13

Will it be Chapter 7 v. 13? After you’ve made the decision to get a fresh start, you need to choose a bankruptcy chapter, usually Chapter 7 or Chapter 13. The choice of chapter is complex, involving many interconnected factors. Here we’re going to compare just the treatment of different kinds of assets in Chapter […]

Filed Under: Considering Bankruptcy, Consumer Rights Tagged With: 2021, chapters

When Giving Isn’t Good

By Cathy Moran

When you owe money to others, you are not free to give assets away. Or retitle them. Or put them in an irrevocable trust. That’s the universal principle of Anglo-Saxon law that prohibits fraudulent transfers. But the concept of a gift being wrong in the law is among the most difficult for ordinary folks to […]

Filed Under: Consumer Rights Tagged With: fraudulent transfer

What happens in Vegas…

By Cathy Moran

gambling debts

May make you a felon. Funny, the Las Vegas PR doesn’t mention criminal prosecution for unpaid gambling markers. Yet Nevada treats gambling markers like negotiable instruments (i.e. checks).  Failure to satisfy a marker within 30 days can lead to criminal charges. Gambling debts gone in bankruptcy Most bankruptcy courts have held that gambling debts are […]

Filed Under: How bankruptcy works

Are You Liable For Your Spouse’s Debts In California?

By Cathy Moran

spouse's debts

“Everyone knows” that California’s community property law makes you liable for spouse’s debts. Only, “everyone” is wrong. Or, more accurately, they’re only half right. Community property is liable for everything In California, the community property is liable for the debts of either spouse. In fact, the community property is liable for the debts that either […]

Filed Under: Strictly California Tagged With: community property

Tax Tips & Tidbits To Pay Less

By Cathy Moran

tax tool roundup

Tax filing deadline approaches, so I thought we’d gather up tax tips and little known tax strategies, especially useful if you’ve filed bankruptcy. The Tax Deduction No One Tells You About If you are paying mortgage interest, state taxes, back support, or business debt through a Chapter 13 plan, those payments made by the trustee […]

Filed Under: Featured, Taxes Tagged With: 2016

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Bankruptcy Basics

About The Soapbox

You’ve arrived at the Bankruptcy Soapbox, a resource of bankruptcy information and consumer law.

Soapbox is a companion site to Bankruptcy in Brief, where I try to be largely explanatory and even handed (Note I said “try”).

Here, I allow myself to tell stories and express strong opinions. We dig deeper into how to consider bankruptcy and navigate a bankruptcy case.

Moran Law Group
Bankruptcy specialists for individuals and small businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area

How Bankruptcy Works

Cheat Sheet For Passing Bankruptcy Means Test

The bankruptcy means test has a fatal weakness in its attempt to keep people out of bankruptcy. Like so much recently, it's health care. It's health care, in the future, to be paid before your creditors get any money in your bankruptcy. It works because, in a logic that only Congress could employ, the means … Read more

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