From the Editor – Debtor’s Attorney and Other Professionals • NACTT Academy

From the Editor – Debtor’s Attorney and Other Professionals

By The Honorable William Houston Brown (Retired)

Mediator is professional person and employment requires court approval. The Chapter 7 trustee moved to toll the time for filing a recovery complaint to permit the parties to conduct mediation, using a retired bankruptcy judge as mediator, and the bankruptcy court questioned whether the trustee would bill for his time in participating in the mediation and would use estate funds to pay a portion of the mediator’s fee. The resulting opinion found that a trustee in any case would not be permitted to unilaterally agree to mediation for . . .

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Surrender of Collateral in a Plan- What Is the Court to Do if the Debtor Doesn’t Follow Through?

June 2, 2019

By Tammy E. Stickley and Francis J. DiCesare, Staff Attorneys for Margaret A. Burks, Esq. Chapter 13 Standing Trustee (Cincinnati, OH) In a media age in which people expect to be told when “spoilers” are ahead, this summary needs no such warning. Courts have little patience for debtors who surrender collateral – especially real estate – then oppose the foreclosure...

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The Brunner Student Loan Hardship Test: Alive and Well in The Big Apple

June 23, 2019

By Herbert L. Beskin, Chapter 13 Trustee for the Western District of Virginia (Charlottesville) Let’s take the following set of facts and see how it plays out in the labyrinthian world of hardship discharge of student loan debt. The case is In re Lozada (Lozada v. Educational Credit Management Corporation), 594 B.R. 212 (Bankr. S.D. N.Y. 2018). Years ago (30...

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Escrow 102 – Part 4 of 4

October 17, 2021

By Michael J. McCormick, Esq., McCalla Raymer Leibert Pierce, LLC (Roswell, GA) Escrow 101 - Part 1 Escrow 101 - Part 2 Escrow 101 - Part 3 Escrow 102 - Part 1

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Critical Case Comment – It’s All in the Proof

Henry E. Hildebrand, III

July 9, 2023

Chapter 13 debtor’s failure to provide evidence of a change in financial circumstances justifies the denial of a motion to modify seeking to reduce the dividend and related payments into the plan. (Cleary) In re DeRoo, 650 B.R. 561 (Bankr. N.D. Ill. May 2, 2023) Case Summary Nicole DeRoo filed a Chapter 13 petition in February of 2022. Above-median income...

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Three Last Things Trustees Should Know About the Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019 – Part V

November 17, 2019

By Lawrence R. Ahern, III, Brown & Ahern (Nashville, TN) Introduction This series focuses on four bankruptcy-related bills that were enacted during the 116th Congress and signed into law on August 23, 2019.1 One bill, the Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019 (SBRA),2 appears in its entirety in Appendix B to this series and was summarized in

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ABI Commission on Consumer Bankruptcy – Post-Petition Changes in Value

July 14, 2019

By Henry E. Hildebrand, III, Chapter 13 Standing Trustee (Nashville, TN) One of the issues raised at the public hearings of the Commission concerned Chapter 7 trustees that would not take prompt action to abandon exempt or partially exempt assets but, would retain assets in the hope that there might be equity in the future to sell the asset for...

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Another Defeat of Bifurcated Chapter 7 Fees

The Honorable William Houston Brown

February 11, 2024

Recent case authority has not been favorable for consumer debtor attorneys seeking approval of bifurcated fees in Chapter 7 cases.

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Supreme Court on Statute of Limitations Under Fair Debt Collection Practices Act

December 15, 2019

By William Houston Brown, Editor/Adviser Academy for Consumer Bankruptcy Education Construing the statute of limitations for actions against debt collectors under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCA), the Supreme Court held on December 10, 2019, that “absent the application of an equitable doctrine, the statute of limitations in § 1692k(d) begins to run on the date on which the...

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Bankruptcy’s Eternal Struggle

May 10, 2020

By Cathy Moran, Esq. (Redwood City, CA) The timeless questions asked by mankind include “why are we here“, “which came first ...” and “coffee or tea“. Bankruptcy lawyers wrestle with “which controls, b-22 or Schedules I and J“. Having argued and lost the Pak case when BAPCPA was new, and felt vindicated when

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From the Editor – Classification

August 9, 2020

By The Honorable William Houston Brown (Retired) Separate classification and preferential treatment of student loan debt. The Chapter 13 trustee and debtors’ attorney attempted to change the traditional approach in the District, seeking approval of a permissible fair discrimination in favor of student loan debt in plans so long as the preferential treatment and discrimination was no more than 20%....

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