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 […]
How Your Property Gets Sold In Your Partner’s Bankruptcy
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 […]
What Game Are We Scoring?
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 […]
5 Free Tools To Fight A Debt Collector
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 […]
How Their Telephone Can Ruin Elders
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. […]
Cut Tax Liens Down to Size
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 […]
Tax Trap When You Settle Debts Outside Of Bankruptcy
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 […]
Google & Me
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 […]
Your Home Is Not A Piggy Bank
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 […]
8 Essential Tasks To Maximize Your Bankruptcy Fresh Start
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 […]
