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Your Creditors Lie In Wait For Your Kids

By Cathy Moran

creditor lurks to prey on heirs

Is your legacy to your kids an encounter with your unpaid creditors? Debt problems for those over 65 may not be problems for the elder at all.  Income and assets are largely protected by law from creditors. But that doesn’t trouble creditors:  they’ll simply wait and get their money from your kids. Seniors enjoy protection […]

Filed Under: Consumer Rights, Managing Money, Strictly California Tagged With: 2016

How Your Property Gets Sold In Your Partner’s Bankruptcy

By Cathy Moran

co owned property

It isn’t just marriage that can get you roped in to a bankruptcy case that isn’t your own. Own community property and a bankruptcy filing by your spouse or your soon-to-be ex can drag you into a bankruptcy court. But the issue is broader:  joint ownership of any kind of asset in any state, community […]

Filed Under: Consumer Rights, Small business

What Game Are We Scoring?

By Cathy Moran

Getting credit after bankruptcy is the most frequent search term that bring visitors to Bankruptcy in Brief, my encyclopedic sister site on bankruptcy. In these visitors’ minds, their credit score is a central concern. It’s ironic that readers, saddled with enough debt to consider bankruptcy, ask about the impact of a bankruptcy on their credit […]

Filed Under: Considering Bankruptcy, Consumer Rights

5 Free Tools To Fight A Debt Collector

By Cathy Moran

debt collection rights

When a debt collector calls, the conversation often seems all too one-sided. The collector makes impossible demands.  Nothing you say penetrates. Including your assertion that you don’t recognize the collector, the debt, or any legal responsibility for paying. Or maybe you recognize the debt but simply don’t have the money to deal with old debt […]

Filed Under: Consumer Rights, Debt Collection Rights

How Their Telephone Can Ruin Elders

By Cathy Moran

The elderly couple was suddenly in financial trouble. The two mortgages on their home were a couple of months delinquent. Their bank account had just been levied by the state taxing authority. They hadn’t filed tax returns since 2009. From the outside, it didn’t seem like anything had changed.  Yet their financial world was imploding. […]

Filed Under: Consumer Rights, Managing Money, True Stories

Cut Tax Liens Down to Size

By Cathy Moran

tax liens

Tax liens are no match for Chapter 13 when it comes to cutting the lien down to its real value. On paper, a tax lien can quickly become huge. In bankruptcy however, a lien is no bigger than the value of the assets it attaches to. While in Chapter 7, liens pass through bankruptcy without […]

Filed Under: Consumer Rights, Taxes

Tax Trap When You Settle Debts Outside Of Bankruptcy

By Cathy Moran

debt settlement

Trying to decide between bankruptcy and debt settlement as the better path to financial health? Own a home? Here’s the killer reason why bankruptcy alone protects you from a serious tax consequence down the road. Debt forgiven outside of bankruptcy gets deducted from the basis of your home.   Result:  more potentially taxable capital gains on […]

Filed Under: Considering Bankruptcy, Consumer Rights Tagged With: 1099, cancelled debt

Google & Me

By Cathy Moran

Google and BankruptcyInBrief share a birthday, I’ve learned. I’m sure you saw the similarities in a flash. The Mercury News reports that Google was founded in 1998, the same year I bought a book and set out to make a web site about bankruptcy. I knew nothing about programming, and less about web design.  But I knew that […]

Filed Under: Consumer Rights, Pondering

Your Home Is Not A Piggy Bank

By Cathy Moran

home isn't piggybank

Right before the Great Recession, lenders, main stream and fly-by-night,  urged us to “tap the equity in your home for what you want today”. California home values were rising.  Credit was easy.  And we always want something more, don’t we. We need to remember those days, because those sales pitches are back. Back on the radio and […]

Filed Under: Consumer Rights Tagged With: 2017

8 Essential Tasks To Maximize Your Bankruptcy Fresh Start

By Cathy Moran

 Got your bankruptcy discharge recently?   The end of the bankruptcy case is the start of your new financial life. Now, you’ve got work to do to maximize that fresh start. Save your bankruptcy papers The bankruptcy schedules listed everyone you owed money to when you filed.  Those creditors got notice of your case. The […]

Filed Under: Consumer Rights, Life after bankruptcy

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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

Does My Bankruptcy Lawyer Need To Be From My City?

If you're inclined pull up a map application to find a bankruptcy lawyer, I gotta ask: is proximity really the most important factor? Not by a mile. You want an experienced, local lawyer, but "local" means active before the judges in the federal judicial district where you live. It doesn't mean having an … Read more

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