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Resolve To Thrive In The New Year

By Cathy Moran

finances in new year

May I suggest a 2025 New Year’s resolution?  It doesn’t involve diets or workouts or commitments to huge personal transformation. Take a hard look at your financial situation. Consider whether a fresh financial start makes sense. Just getting by A life of minimum payments, minuscule bank accounts, and no retirement savings is a life fraught […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: 2023, resolutions

The Secret Alternative To Bankruptcy

By Cathy Moran

alternatives to bankruptcy

Looking for the secret alternative to bankruptcy which will solve your debt problems without filing? Why not? Ads for debt settlement companies and do-it-yourself books always promise to reveal the tricks to make your bills vanish for pennies, without resort to bankruptcy. (Isn’t it interesting that these “secrets” are known only by people who want […]

Filed Under: Considering Bankruptcy, Featured Tagged With: 2016, bankruptcy alternatives, debt settlement

Smoke, Mirrors, And Budgets: Are You Missing Where Your Money Goes

By Cathy Moran

budget tricks

Budget tricks keep lots of us from seeing where our money goes. If you don’t know where it’s going, you don’t know whether your spending priorities are sound. As a bankruptcy attorney, I hear this alot: I can’t save anything because it takes every dollar I make just to get by. Sound like a description of […]

Filed Under: Consumer Rights Tagged With: budgets, cost of living

5 Things To Do When You Have Been Sued

By Cathy Moran

The ring on the doorbell was a process server. Bingo!  You’ve been sued. Now what? Breathe deeply and work your way through this five step check list.  Then I’ll suggest some options. The details in this post are based on California law. The basic principles of notice, answer, and trial apply everywhere. Scout the territory […]

Filed Under: Debt Collection Rights, Featured Tagged With: garnishment, lawsuit, sued

Don’t Fall For Your Mortgage Lender’s Insurance

By Cathy Moran

lender home insurance

The mortgage lender’s property insurance does not leave you in good hands. No matter how much time it saves you. Your lender is not a good neighbor when it comes to insurance. When your home insurance lapses Somehow my client let her homeowners insurance lapse.  She wasn’t worried about it, she told me, because the […]

Filed Under: Real property & mortgages Tagged With: force-placed insurance, homeowners insurance

TImeless Wisdom Doesn’t Apply When Filing Bankruptcy

By Cathy Moran

“Don’t count your chickens before they hatch”.  It’s a time-tested bit of folk wisdom. But applying that kind of thinking to legal claims when you’re filling out bankruptcy schedules is foolish. Worse, it can get you booted out of court. Count your “chickens” Bankruptcy starts with a list of what you own and what you […]

Filed Under: Consumer Rights

Find The Right Cure for Your Debt Problems

By Cathy Moran

get out of debt

Get-out-of-debt advice and sales pitches abound. But too few get-out-of-debt gurus tell you that you need a diagnosis of your financial ills before prescribing the cure. Is the stomach ache indigestion or appendicitis? Is it temporary upset or life threatening? The answer makes a big difference in how you treat it. No single prescription for […]

Filed Under: Consumer Rights Tagged With: 2019, get out of debt

Got Tax Trouble? Don’t File Bankruptcy In December

By Cathy Moran

wait to file bankruptcy

Bankruptcy can provide tax relief,  if your timing is right. Tax troubles are at the heart of so many bankruptcy filings.  It makes sense:  bankruptcy is a powerful and predictable tool to get out of tax debt. But filing bankruptcy before the end of the year may fix only a part of your tax problems.  […]

Filed Under: Featured, Taxes Tagged With: 2016, discharge taxes

Give More Than Thanks

By Cathy Moran

share at Thanksgiving

Ever feel the disconnect between buying your groceries for the Thanksgiving meal, then dropping some loose change into the kettle for the needy? Lots for my family, but leftovers for those who are hungry That seems to be the message you’re sending. Those of us who are prospering are doing well, but lots of neighbors and elders […]

Filed Under: Featured

Get Rid Of Liens On Your Home

By Cathy Moran

bankruptcy superpower

Bankruptcy gives you a super power: you’re able to remove liens on your home, for good. You can’t wipe out every kind of lien. But bankruptcy law allows you to invalidate judicial liens that attach to your home and invade any exemption you are entitled to. The power is available to individuals in any chapter […]

Filed Under: Real property & mortgages

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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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