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Search Results for: do you need to file bankruptcy

How To Spend Money Before Filing Bankruptcy

By Cathy Moran

checks float before bankruptcy

Trying to spend down cash before filing bankruptcy? It’s time to talk about the float. Not the root beer float, though that would be more fun. The bank “float”:  the period between writing a check and it clearing your bank. (We’ll talk about what to spend on before filing bankruptcy, too). When you file bankruptcy, […]

Filed Under: How bankruptcy works

The Trouble With Your Social Security

By Cathy Moran

Social Security call

The caller says your Social Security file is incomplete and without more information, your assets, as well as your benefits, will be frozen. Pretty terrifying if you depend on Social Security checks. Only, it’s not true. The caller isn’t from Social Security. Social Security can’t freeze your assets. Social Security doesn’t do business by phone. […]

Filed Under: Consumer Rights Tagged With: 2018

Ordinary Heroes Deliver Second Chances With Bankruptcy

By Cathy Moran

bankruptcy is heroic

Guest author Bob Schuman on the good that bankruptcy does. I’m a mortgage broker. In that role, I see close up the immense relief that a homeowner feels when they file Chapter 13. They are no longer forced to deal with collection calls and a multitude of letters that are aggressive and intimidating, threatening to […]

Filed Under: You & your lawyer Tagged With: 2019

Bankruptcy No Place For DIY

By Cathy Moran

The do- it- yourself spirit seems especially strong in bankruptcy courts these days. Only it often comes with a big price tag. Nearly 45% of the Central District CA Chapter 7 cases were filed by individuals doing it themselves.  The national rules committee drafted the new bankruptcy forms with the unrepresented in mind. Why do people […]

Filed Under: Consumer Rights, You & your lawyer Tagged With: do it yourself

The One Person You Must Tell About Your Bankruptcy

By Cathy Moran

bankruptcy tax

Most people who file bankruptcy don’t want anyone else to know. Some of my clients try to hide their break for financial freedom from friends and neighbors. Others are worried about their boss finding out. Occasionally, someone will try to keep it from their mate. But trying to hide his bankruptcy nearly cost one client […]

Filed Under: Consumer Rights, Taxes, True Stories

Getting Rid Of Junior Home Liens In Bankruptcy

By Cathy Moran

One of Chapter 13’s superpowers is its ability to strip off  mortgage liens on a home. Ordinarily, liens survive a bankruptcy discharge as a charge on the collateral;  it’s the borrower’s personal liability that is wiped out. But Chapter 13 allows the elimination of voluntary liens when the lien isn’t really secured by any value […]

Filed Under: Real property & mortgages

Tax Form 1099 Needs A Closer Look: Chances Are It’s Wrong

By Bill Purdy

tax form 1099

  Tax attorney Bill Purdy says:  don’t take IRS form 1099 at face value. Hundreds of thousands of taxpayers at this moment are looking at, or thinking about, Form 1099-A or Form 1099-C documents they have received. Some arrived in the tax year a debt was allegedly cancelled. Others are issued by financial instructions many […]

Filed Under: Featured, Taxes Tagged With: 2019, cancellation of debt tax, tax form 1099

Business Bankruptcy Depends On Who You Are

By Cathy Moran

business bankruptcy

While knowing who you are may be central to philosophy and mental health, you wouldn’t think it poses a difficult question in a business bankruptcy. You wouldn’t think the word “you” would be so challenging. Yet, small business owners find it hard to separate themselves from the business, even when that business is incorporated. After […]

Filed Under: Consumer Rights, Small business Tagged With: struggling business

What Creditors Of PG&E Need To Know About Bankruptcy

By Wayne Silver

PG&E bankruptcy

Listen up if you’ve done business with PG&E, now or in the past. The PG&E bankruptcy affects you in varying ways, as we explore below. You have some important decisions to make, such as: Should you keep doing business with PG&E? If you do are you going to get paid? When? What about money PG&E […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: 2019, PG&E

What Are Your Rights In A California Foreclosure

By Cathy Moran

The old saw about Oakland, California is that there is no “there” there. I suggest it’s the same about being “in foreclosure”:  foreclosure is not a place, it’s a path. Nothing legally meaningful changes until you get to a foreclosure sale.  Everything before that is prelude. Yet several  Bay Area clients have asked whether they can remove personal […]

Filed Under: Strictly California

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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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