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All Star Soapbox Posts For 2017 – The Readers’ Favorites

By Cathy Moran

best of Soapbox

We’re half way through the year here on the Bankruptcy Soapbox.  Let’s take an All Star break and single out the best performing posts so far this year. Strikingly, the team is all veterans.  Not a single post written in 2017 cracked the top ten. Nor did the two topics that animate me the most, […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: 2017

Bankruptcy Alphabet: Y is for Yoke

By Cathy Moran

  Y, in my Bankruptcy Alphabet, stands for Yoke. Debt is a yoke around the neck of a person.  It keeps him harnessed to the weight of past financial decisions and, sometimes, to events over which he had no control. There are times in life when the right course is to put your shoulder to […]

Filed Under: ABC's of bankruptcy, Featured

How Will Bankruptcy Filers Retire?

By Cathy Moran

provide for retirement

  Contributions to 401(k) retirement  plans during a Chapter 13 are not forbidden, as claimed by a colleague. He paints with far too broad a brush. A better reading of the Parks decision by the 9th Circuit Bankruptcy Appellate Panel is narrower: The debtor cannot deduct from their income their on going contributions to a 401(k)  […]

Filed Under: Featured

The Dozen Most Important Bankruptcy Posts Of 2016

By Cathy Moran

bankruptcy advice on target

Last week, I let readers pick their favorite new bankruptcy posts from 2016 . It was a good bunch. Now, it’s my turn. Here are the dozen new posts for this year that struck a chord with me. If there’s a theme, it’s the subject matter, rather than the style. Each post is on target on issues […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: 2016

Your Picks For The Best Of Bankruptcy Soapbox For 2016

By Cathy Moran

Best Bankruptcy Blogs

Jumping the gun on year-end by a bit, I’ve gathered up the 10 most-read new posts on Bankruptcy Soapbox in 2016. Without need of an envelop, please,  here they are, in reverse order: 10.  Why The Gap Between Judges & Attorneys About Fees Most bankruptcy judges never walked a mile (or any distance) in the […]

Filed Under: Featured

Spotting The Mean In The Means Test

By Cathy Moran

means test

Just being a consumer is enough to put you on Congress’s bad side when it comes to bankruptcy. How do I know? I read the “reformed” bankruptcy code where the means test discrimination is blatant. Only those individuals whose debts are primarily consumer debts have to prove that they aren’t abusing the bankruptcy laws. The […]

Filed Under: Featured, Means test, True Stories Tagged With: 2016

Why The Gap Between Judges & Attorneys Over Fees?

By Cathy Moran

attorneys fees in Chapter 13

Very few bankruptcy judges ever represented average individuals in bankruptcy before they became judges. Fewer were sole practitioners,who must rely on the fees they earn and collect to stay in business. Those two factors seem to create the chasm between bench and bar over attorneys fees in consumer bankruptcy cases. This post starts from the […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: 2016

The Dr. Seuss Secret To Laws That Actually Work

By Cathy Moran

Empty voting booths

The election  is here.  If you haven’t already, get out and vote. Put aside your excuses and your cynicism. Forget that democracy, at the detail level, hasn’t worked so well lately. In the big picture, voting, picking those who write the laws and those who administer them, is the essence of our freedom. Winston Churchill […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: election

The DOJ War On Chapter 13 Debtors

By Cathy Moran

Chapter 13 trustee

What’s wrong with the picture when United States Trustee is offended by Chapter 13 success? I heard a distressing story about the war against debtors recently. It seems a high rate of successful Chapter 13 plan completions triggered multi-day audit of the trustee by the United States Trustee.  The UST likes to remind us that it […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: 2016

Foreclosure Looms But The Bank’s Numbers Don’t Add Up

By Cathy Moran

The bank wants to foreclose on my client’s home. They claim he’s months behind. Only the numbers in their relief from stay papers filed in the bankruptcy don’t add up. The mortgage balance is one thing here, and other thing there. They file a declaration under penalty of perjury saying they have the note, followed within […]

Filed Under: Featured, Real property & mortgages 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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