The infamous Melania Trump speech at the Republican convention shared more than a paragraph or so with Michelle Obama. It shared Michelle’s aspirational thought that in America, any child with hard work and perseverance can succeed. “The only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work hard for […]
Why Creditors Should Get Less in Chapter 13
Spending every dollar they make, and then some, is often how our Chapter 13 clients got into financial trouble. Yet Chapter 13, as practiced, validates the practice of continuing to spend 100% of each month’s income during the life of the plan. In doing so, we squander the chance to use Chapter 13 to teach […]
Why No-Look Bankruptcy Fees Are No-Good
Lawyers become lawyers, in large part, because they can’t, or don’t want to, do math. Judges are lawyers who got promoted. And therein is the root of the problem with “no look” attorneys fee for consumer bankruptcy cases. Judges don’t understand mathematics. They expect the “law” of averages to result in fair compensation for debtor’s lawyers, relieving judges […]
Hunger In The Golden State
Californians go hungry while we ship tax dollars to Washington. This isn’t a rant about ruinous taxation. It’s about hunger. The “net” of yesterday’s news that is that 45% of the Californians eligible for food assistance through SNAP aren’t enrolled. We pay taxes for a program to help the least well-off among us, then don’t […]
Car Crazy In Bankruptcy Court
My client wants to keep paying on his car after bankruptcy. The lender wants my client to keep paying on his car after bankruptcy. Yet it took an afternoon in court for a hearing set by the judge on approval of my client’s reaffirmation agreement with the car lender to get everyone what they wanted. What […]
Money Troubles Plague My Vacation
I needed a vacation, badly. After a long year launching Money Health Central, practicing bankruptcy law through the Great Recession, and teaching new bankruptcy lawyers at Bankruptcy Mastery, I was drained. Three weeks away sounded like Nirvana. I had three weeks in which I didn’t have to post a thing to the three or four […]
Self Employed, But Not By Choice
One of the thorniest problems I’m confronting in the Great Recession is what advice to offer to those who are self employed only because there is no option. In the past year, I’ve seen half a dozen folks whose small business isn’t really making it. In better times, I would have urged them to acknowledge […]
Financial Literacy: Politics May Make It A Matter Of Life Or Death
Rep. Ryan’s proposal that Medicare be replaced with a voucher system for elders to buy private insurance sends shudders down my spine, for the very reason that we’ve been talking about this week at Money Health Central: financial literacy. Ryan’s has a lovely idea that elders will be informed and prudent shoppers for medical insurance; it […]
It’s all in your point of view
A newly appointed judge said the nicest thing in his new career was not having to be an advocate anymore. What? That’s what I love about being a lawyer. Sure, there are some times when you don’t have the best facts or you don’t share your client’s point of view on what the outcome should […]
What happened to encouraging Chapter 13
Used to be, bankruptcy law was organized to encourage debtors to file Chapter 13 and repay some part of their debts. Some part of that encouragement came in the form of the Super Discharge: the ability to discharge debts incurred by bad acts; unfiled tax debt from long past tax years; and unfiled claims in […]
