Can Negative Projected Disposable Income Offset Positive Projected Disposable Income?

By Kenneth Siomos, Attorney Representing Chapter 13 Trustee John H. Germeraad, Petersburg, IL

A number of important questions about § 1325(b), the disposable income test, have been resolved or, at least, appear to be near a final resolution. The Supreme Court, in Hamilton v. Lanning, determined that a debtor’s disposable income is just a presumptive starting point when determining “projected disposable income.”1 Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal interpreting the “applicable commitment period” are currently in unanimous agreement that even when disposable income is negative, an . . .

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Critical Case Comment– Secured Creditor Granted Relief from Stay. But, Wait There’s More . . . No Proof of Claim.

Henry E. Hildebrand, III

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Secured creditor in a Chapter 13 case entitled to relief from the stay due to lack of adequate protection where the creditor neglects to file a proof of claim and, as a consequent, received no payments under a Chapter 13 plan. (Conley) Weyer v. Valley Communities Credit Union, 2022 WL 1597293 (W.D. Wis. May 19, 2022) Case Summary Dana and...

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Student Loans Debacle-Part II: Failure to Forgive – The Ticking Time-Bomb

R. Michael Smith

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The recent push for student loan forgiveness has been met with increasing opposition. The rationales for not providing a generally applicable path for student loan forgiveness or cancellation have included arguments based upon imagined unfairness to those previously able to pay off their loans, which seems to be both short-sighted, as well as a “red herring” argument. It does not...

Passing of Affable, Humanitarian Trustee

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Henry E. Hildebrand, III

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By Phil Lamos, Chief Legal Counsel, Office of the Chapter 13 Trustee Lauren A. Helbling (Cleveland, OH) Bankruptcy Rule 2002(a)(5) directs that 21 days’ notice must be given of the “time fixed to accept or reject a proposed modification of a [Chapter 13] plan.” But to whom must notice be given? Specifically, which creditors need to be given notice? This...

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Critical Case Comment–“No Realistic Future Prospects”

Henry E. Hildebrand, III

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A 34-year-old Chapter 7 debtor could discharge his student loan obligation by establishing that he could not reasonably make payments on the balance, could not maintain a reasonable standard of living, and because the expiration of his payment term had already passed, his standard of living was likely to persist, with no realistic future prospects. (Silverstein) In re Wolfson, No....

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Trustee May Use Any Law Available to Avoid a Transfer

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(Reprinted with permission: https://www.dailyjournal.com/) By M. Jonathan Hayes, Resnik Hayes, Moradi LLP (Los Angeles) I met with my best friend Jim King, consumer bankruptcy attorney extraordinaire, during the Thanksgiving break in 2014, several weeks before his untimely death. We met at his office in Glendale to do his oral history. Somewhere in there I told him he could borrow my...

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Creditors’ Rights and Debtors’ Protections at the Intersection of Consumer Bankruptcy and UCC Article 9

August 30, 2020

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