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When Your STBX Files Bankruptcy: An Action Plan

By Cathy Moran

stbx bankruptcy

Whether the news comes by phone or mail, the notice that your soon-to-be-ex spouse has filed bankruptcy can bring fear and confusion. You need some facts and a plan, now. So let’s look at how bankruptcy affects a non filing spouse and how to chart a course through a STBX bankruptcy case. Child support safe […]

Filed Under: Consumer Rights, Family Law Tagged With: divorce, family law

Marital Separation Doesn’t Require Two Homes

By Cathy Moran

Split the sheets in California, and your wages are no longer community property. That’s because property acquired during marriage but after a marital separation isn’t community property. That’s been California law for a long while. The sticky wicket has been drawing the line when the marriage has broken down and the couple has separated. “When” they separated determines […]

Filed Under: Family Law, Strictly California Tagged With: 2016

Right To Support When Your Ex Files Bankruptcy

By Cathy Moran

Outrage is the usual reaction when a former spouse who owes you child support or alimony files bankruptcy. It reinforces all those less-than-flattering thoughts you harbor about your ex. But maybe that’s not the right reaction for two reasons, one old, one new. One is old: support debts can’t be wiped out in bankruptcy. The second […]

Filed Under: Family Law, How bankruptcy works

The Most Costly Community Property Blunder

By Cathy Moran

california property

What do you do when creditors from your spouse’s past threaten? Chances are your first reaction is to put the title to your biggest assets in just your name. Whew! Safe. Not. Just because  the deed to the house now reads Jane Doe instead of John Doe and Jane Doe it’s easy to think the house is Jane’s separate […]

Filed Under: Family Law, Strictly California

“Hold Harmless” Survives “To Have and To Hold”

By Cathy Moran

  Divorce usually requires the division of the debts of the marriage along with the assets. The legalese usually requires each party to indemnify and hold harmless the other from the debts assigned to that party. Most folks skim over that provision to worry about the division of assets or support issues or the termination […]

Filed Under: Family Law

Divorce And The Ticking Debt Bomb

By Cathy Moran

Debts of the marriage often outlive the marriage itself. And, those left-over debts are nothing but trouble. But too often, divorcing couples don’t mop up the joint debts they held during the marriage, only to have the situation blows up years later when one ex-spouse hits financial trouble. Here’s a true story that illustrates the danger. […]

Filed Under: Family Law, How bankruptcy works, True Stories

Five Ways To Bankruptcy Proof Your Divorce

By Cathy Moran

If you want to survive the bankruptcy of your ex spouse unscathed,  consider the bankruptcy possibility during the divorce. A marital settlement, binding outside of bankruptcy, means little in Chapter 13. No matter how prejudicial or unfair, a Chapter 13 discharge will relieve a former spouse of obligations of all obligations to their ex except for support. […]

Filed Under: Family Law, Managing Money

Dividing Debts At Divorce: What You Need To Know

By Cathy Moran

The division of the debts of a failed marriage, however carefully crafted at divorce, can be utterly destroyed if one of the former spouses files a Chapter 13 bankruptcy. A Chapter 13 discharge is double barreled.  It will eliminate the debts that the filing spouse owes to creditors.  It also wipes out any obligation to the […]

Filed Under: Consumer Rights, Family Law

Bankruptcy And Divorce Collide: The Revenge 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, Strictly California

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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 on how I think law should work for the consumer and small businesses when it comes to debt.

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

How Bankruptcy Works

High Income Earners Pass Bankruptcy’s Means Test

ALERT:   Being above the median income on the means test is not an automatic bar to filing bankruptcy I'm so used to railing against deliberate campaigns of misinformation about bankruptcy that I forget that there's a lot of innocent ignorance out there. Start with "qualifying" for bankruptcy. A very … Read more

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