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Tax Fallout from Foreclosure & Loan Modification

By Cathy Moran

It’s bad enough when the client loses their home to foreclosure, but it’s a double whammy when the tax bill arrives for money they never saw. Scope out the tax traps in the world of indebted clients at a 2 hour workshop for lawyers and tax professionals April 9 at Lincoln Law School. Be prepared […]

Filed Under: Real property & mortgages, Taxes

New California law protects sellers in short sales

By Cathy Moran

Effective January 1, 2011, a lender who approves a short sale of California residential property may not look to the seller for the shortfall. The addition to the California Code of Civil Procedure at Section 580(e) applies only to properties of one to four units and has an exception if the seller commits waste or […]

Filed Under: Developing law, Real property & mortgages

Rant on realtors

By Cathy Moran

Or maybe this is just a continuing, disappointed sigh that this group, who tries to build a profession around selling houses, is itself oversold. Latest example arose where a homeowner was referred to me by his accountant, concerned about a pending short sale of the client’s home.  By our rough calculations, the short sale of […]

Filed Under: Real property & mortgages

Guilt & fear used to keep homeowners paying

By Cathy Moran

Susanne Robicsek’s post on the futility of keeping a home through bankruptcy brought to mind Professor Brent White’s paper on the use by government and financial counselors of fear and shame to keep people paying on mortgages on underwater homes. White cites a litany of messages from apparently credible sources who chant that a foreclosure […]

Filed Under: Real property & mortgages

Loan modification resources

By Cathy Moran

The good folks at the National Consumer Law Center have put together a page of links to various programs and procedures for troubled home loans. My colleague John Mlnarik has begun a discussion of the Obama Treasury programs announced earlier in  March on www.norcalmortgagemods.com. Now, we need the Senate to move on S. 61 and […]

Filed Under: Real property & mortgages

Take that, and that, you mortgage lender

By Cathy Moran

It was a good day at my desk, if one has to work on Saturdays. I gave notice that one client was rescinding a $180,000 mortgage for Truth in Lending violations. I found three clients whose second deeds of trust can be eliminated as liens on homes because they are completely underwater. I sent out […]

Filed Under: Real property & mortgages

Case of the vanishing home equity

By Cathy Moran

My friend Kurt O’Keefe writes about the 6 trillion dollars in home equity than has evaporated in the mortgage meltdown. When I look around me in the Silicon Valley and environs, I question just how real that equity really was. Reckless lending practices made a vast pool of people potential buyers for a limited quantity […]

Filed Under: Real property & mortgages

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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

Speak Fluent Bankruptcy: Guide To Essential Bankruptcy Terms

Bankruptcy has its own language.  If you are considering filing bankruptcy, it helps to know the language spoken there. Master just a couple of words and phrases, and input from a bankruptcy lawyer starts to make sense. So, in our continuing campaign for better understanding of bankruptcy, here's a dozen … Read more

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