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How Chapter 13 Cuts Car Loan Down To Size

By Cathy Moran

Car lenders who make new car loans with an underwater trade-in will face the music in Chapter 13. The Supreme Court declined to review a 9th Circuit decision that stripped car loans of their protected specially protected status in bankruptcy; as a result, Californians will continue to benefit from the debtor-friendly decision in Penrod, rising out of […]

Filed Under: Chapter 13, How bankruptcy works Tagged With: car loan, chapter 13, underwater trade in

What Your Bankruptcy Lawyer Can’t Tell You

By Cathy Moran

bankruptcy secret about means test

Replace your car before filing bankruptcy. That’s a secret, just between us. Bankruptcy “reform” in 2005 tried in a number of ways to discredit and gag lawyers trying to help debtors. One of those additions to the Bankruptcy Code prohibits lawyers from advising those filing bankruptcy to incur new debt.  The statute makes no distinction […]

Filed Under: How bankruptcy works Tagged With: Car, means test

Bankruptcy Alphabet: J For Justify

By Cathy Moran

J stands for Justify in my Bankruptcy Alphabet.  Or rather, it stands for “no need to Justify” your decision to file bankruptcy. Those considering bankruptcy imagine the first meeting of creditors as an inquisition by the trustee. They fear that they will have to justify their choice of bankruptcy and that the trustee could disallow […]

Filed Under: ABC's of bankruptcy, How bankruptcy works

Six Rotten Excuses Not To File Bankruptcy

By Bill Purdy

Six Rotten Excuses Not To FIle

I am not a bankruptcy attorney. I never have been.  I am a mortgage law attorney. But in the current financial climate, I see clients in my office daily who desperately need to file bankruptcy…And they won’t. The reasons they give, and the parade of horrors they’ve built up in their minds about bankruptcy, are heart-felt, […]

Filed Under: Considering Bankruptcy, How bankruptcy works Tagged With: guest post

Bankruptcy Discharge vs. Dismissal

By Cathy Moran

dismissed or discharged

Dismissed and discharged. In a bankruptcy case, these two terms are at the opposite ends of the scale of results in bankruptcy. Yet they are often confused. A discharge is a win!  The bankruptcy discharge order wipes out your personal legal liability to pay a debt. A dismissal is usually a loss.  It means the […]

Filed Under: How bankruptcy works

Get A Deal On Your Car After Bankruptcy

By Cathy Moran

wheels after bankruptcy

How are you going to keep your car after you file Chapter 7 bankruptcy? Here in California , little is more essential to holding a job and really getting a fresh start than a car to get to work in.   While the bankruptcy discharge will relieve you of liability for the loan on the […]

Filed Under: How bankruptcy works Tagged With: 2016

California Homestead Works In Other States, Too

By Cathy Moran

California homestead

California homestead law drives bankruptcy exemptions even for those who no longer live in California. Strange, when the homestead statute was state law originally written for Californians. Two things have expanded its reach:  bankruptcy “reform” and the concept of extraterritoriality. The third driver, of course, is mobility:  we seem much more likely these days to […]

Filed Under: How bankruptcy works Tagged With: 2019, exemptions

File bankruptcy tomorrow?

By Cathy Moran

Clients clearly have little sense of how long it takes to file bankruptcy. Proof is what happened Monday: there’s an email the morning’s inbox from a client whom I first met weeks ago. He tells me they want to file before Wednesday’s mediation in state court! I have no creditor information, representation agreement, money, or […]

Filed Under: How bankruptcy works, You & your lawyer

The Means Test: Badly Mangled

By Cathy Moran

Another purported financial professional has confidently and conclusively gotten the bankruptcy means test absolutely dead wrong. And used that wrong conclusion to steer someone away from bankruptcy. Mt. St. Helens has nothing on me in terms of venting. How can financial professionals get this so wrong, more than a decade after the means test was enacted? Mangling the […]

Filed Under: How bankruptcy works, Means test, True Stories

How A Careless Bankruptcy Can Bite Your Family

By Cathy Moran

Your bankruptcy can affect your family even though they haven’t filed bankruptcy. Transfer assets or repay debts , and you can expose family to attack by the bankruptcy trustee. Even if not fatal, the trustee’s bite can  leave scars. How family gets sucked in I sat waiting for my turn at a bankruptcy hearing last week […]

Filed Under: How bankruptcy works

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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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