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Cramming Down Mortgage Liens: The Plot Thickens

By Cathy Moran

cutting mortgage to size

Can you afford to cram down a mortgage when cram down is permitted? Mortgages on a debtor’s home are protected from cram down in Chapter 13 by 1322(b)(2). Mortgages on any other kind of real estate can be reduced to the value at filing of the collateral securing the debt as of the date of […]

Filed Under: How bankruptcy works, Real property & mortgages

How Long Til Foreclosure?

By Cathy Moran

time til foreclosure

Everyone who has made the painful decision to let an unaffordable house go to foreclosure wants to know: how long before they have to get out. While the statutory foreclosure process in California , on paper, takes a little more than 4 months, if the the creditor is perfectly efficient, creditors aren’t perfectly efficient. In […]

Filed Under: Real property & mortgages, Strictly California Tagged With: California, default, foreclosure, sale

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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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

What Happens To Your Bank Account in Chapter 13

Those considering filing a Chapter 13 bankruptcy worry about "what happens to my bank account?" Will the trustee take all the money? How do I pay my living expenses after I file? The short answer is: nothing changes. The account remains yours and available for all the expenses of day to day living. Because, … Read more

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