Who gets their legal advice from their adversary?
My client did.
My client insisted that his tenant’s debt to him survived the tenant’s bankruptcy “because it was listed on Schedule G“.
The tenant had “explained” to my client that Schedule G was the list of debts the debtor didn’t seek to discharge. So, my client continued, he was legally free to collect the back rent from the debtor after bankruptcy.
I had to explain it wasn’t so.
Get your legal advice from your adversary, your brother in law, or the internet and be prepared to get a surprise.
Schedule G is not a list of debts the debtor wants to continue paying on; it’s a list of executory contracts and unexpired leases. The debtor’s obligation for each of those debts is discharged just as the debts listed on Schedule F.
Reaffirmation is the only way that a dischargeable debt survives the discharge. Reaffirmation requires a timely written agreement made after the bankruptcy is filed and approved by the bankruptcy judge.
None of that had happened in this case.
Law in the information age
The fund of information in our world is immense, and more accessible with the advent of the internet.
Not all of that information , however, is equally reliable.
The law is often complicated and dependent on the facts. Information gets stale. Not all bloggers know what they’re talking about.
I cringe when a client tells me that he’s “researched bankruptcy on the internet“. Too often, the client’s full of misinformation complicated by erroneous assumptions.
I applaud the proactive consumer. Just take what you read on the internet with a grain of salt. There’s a reason that lawyers go to school for three years before they can take the bar exam.
If anything important to you rides on the information you seek, seek out a lawyer for some input.
Free legal advice can be really costly, and the cost of a lawyer to fix the situation is usually far greater than the cost of getting it right the first time.
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