By James J. Robinson, Chief United States Bankruptcy Judge, Northern District of Alabama Who appoints the standing chapter 13 trustee? The United States Trustee appoints the standing chapter 13 trustee for each judicial district where the UST system is in place, while the court appoints the standing chapter 13 trustee under the Bankruptcy Administrator program. See 11 U.S.C. § 1302...

By The Honorable William Houston Brown (Retired) Chapter 13 debtor lacked “person aggrieved” standing to appeal objection to trustee’s final report. The bankruptcy court had overruled the debtor’s objection to the trustee’s final report, and debtor’s appeal was dismissed, with the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel finding that debtor lacked “person aggrieved” standing to appeal. Debtor’s objection had not included amount of...

By Henry E. Hildebrand, III, Chapter 13 Standing Trustee (Nashville, TN) Exemptions in consumer cases have always presented difficult problems for practitioners and trustees. In a bow to states’ rights, the Bankruptcy Act of 1898 deferred to exemptions created by state law. When BAPCPA was enacted in 2005, Congress continued the practice of allowing each state to “opt out” of...

There is no special language/verbiage. Keep is simple. Stick to one issue per NOE. Pertinent loan/debtor information – “name, rank, and serial number” Called bank twice. Tried to get borrower reviewed for FHA Recovery Mod. Both times I was essentially told that the loan was “too many months delinquent” to be reviewed for FHA Recovery Mod. I was also told...

By Lawrence R. Ahern, III, Brown & Ahern (Nashville, TN) Click here for Part I, Introduction to the 2019 Legislation Click here for Part II, Five Things a Trustee Should Know About SBRA Part III The Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019 (SBRA)1 is of interest to attorneys whose clients in troubled . . . It looks like you are...

Bankruptcy has been the focus of the Boleman Law Firm’s 30+ year history, but my law partners and I believed it was important for our firm’s long-term health to add a new practice area that would be complimentary to bankruptcy. Even though we were filing almost 250 new Chapter 7 and 13 cases every month before the pandemic, most of...

By The Honorable William Houston Brown (Retired) Claim allowed after reopening of no-asset case. The Chapter 7 case filed as no-asset was reopened after discovery of assets for distribution, and debtors objected to a claim on basis of statute of limitations. Affirming, the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel held that the time to commence action on the claim had been tolled under...

(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...

By Cathy Moran, Esq. (Redwood City, CA) Like so much in life, it’s all about timing. I revisited an older post here about delaying the filing of a bankruptcy til the New Year when the debtor expects to owe taxes in April. A Chapter 13 filed in January can include and pay the taxes associated with the tax year ending...

By Mary Beth Ausbrooks, Rothschild & Ausbrooks PLLC (Nashville, TN) With the prolonged decline in case filings, I found that sending a mass emailed newsletter has been very beneficial. In order to send a mass email to a group of people, it was necessary to find software that would send the emails out in such a fashion that the email...