These virtual 341 meetings via Zoom will be implemented on a rolling basis through early 2024.

By The Honorable William Houston Brown (Retired) Equal monthly payments and attorney fees. The secured creditor objected to confirmation on basis that the plan improperly deferred its payments until debtor’s attorney fees were paid, and the District Court affirmed confirmation that delayed start of secured equal monthly payments for 21 months. The opinion examines three approaches to the issue: 1)...

(Song by Joni Mitchell – first recorded by Judy Collins in 1968) By Merideth Akers, CPA, PHR, Comptroller for Bradford W. Caraway (Birmingham, AL) In the simplest terms, bankruptcy has two sides. The debtor is on one side, and the creditor is on the opposite side. Although there are opposite sides in bankruptcy, the system is designed to be non-adversarial....

By The Honorable William Houston Brown (Retired) Three-month delay in completing bare-bones petition. When the Chapter 13 debtor filed a skeletal petition, her motion for more time to complete schedules, statement and plan was denied, with no cause found for extending time after three-month delay, and show cause hearing was set to determine if case should be dismissed with 180-day...

By Henry E. Hildebrand, III, Chapter 13 Trustee, Middle District of TN (Nashville) Chapter 13 trustee is not compelled to return the percentage fee taken from a Chapter 13 case when the case is dismissed prior to confirmation. Harmon v. McCallister, 2021 WL 3087744 (9th Cir. BAP July 20, 2021) (Gan) Case Summary Douglas and Christine Harmon filed a Chapter...

Diane Cipollone is an attorney and a qualified expert on mortgage servicing and loan origination matters. While Diane no longer provides expert testimony, she continues to consult with consumer attorneys; trains attorneys, court mediators, housing counselors and fair housing advocates on foreclosure prevention guidelines and federal mortgage regulations; and mentors pro bono attorneys and non-profit housing counselors. She has presented...

By Jan Hamilton, Chapter 13 Trustee (Topeka, KS) Introduction Preliminarily, I recognize that many of those reading this do not need to. There are many fine trial attorneys in the bankruptcy bar. Those folks could well be writing this article. By way of defending myself in advance, this little piece does not consist of a series of war stories or...

By Cathy Moran, Esq., (Redwood City, CA) When a married couple books a bankruptcy consultation, you have an immediate problem: There be dragons, as early map makers helpfully provided. Because, as a lawyer friend of mine says: Anytime there are two people sitting across from you, you have a conflict of interest. That pithy expression has stuck with me and...

By Angela M. Scolforo, Staff Attorney to Herbert L. Beskin, Chapter 13 Trustee for the Western District of Virginia Since January 2019 alone there have been about 250 student loan discharge cases decided in the federal courts.1 One site reports that student loan debt in the United States totals $1.73 trillion, across 43.2 million borrowers, and the debt is growing6...