By Robert (Bob) Schuman, Owner/Managing Broker, Network Financial Group Is it 2008 again? For us in the mortgage industry, we woke up this week feeling as if during the night, we were transported back to 2008 when the mortgage industry basically collapsed. Then, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the FHA were the exceptions. As of March 25, 2020, like everything...

If you put your ear to the ground you may hear the rumblings regarding a change to Bankruptcy Rule 3002.1 requiring the institution of a mid-case bankruptcy audit. This mid-case audit would be like the Notice of Final Cure but would be performed by a trustee’s office in the middle of a pending Chapter 13, rather than at the end,...

Kara K. Gendron, Esquire, Mott & Gendron Law (Harrisburg, PA) A “kill switch” is a device which can be used to disable a machine or program. They have been used for years in a myriad of safety measures, such as shutting down machinery in the event of an emergency, or to prevent the theft of a machine or data. Some...

In any given year Chapter 13 Trustees administer 400,000 to 500,000 cases and distribute almost $5 billion to creditors.  A critical duty for trustees is to be sure that distributions are correctly delivered to an allowed claimant. 11 USC § 501 governs the filing of a proof of claim and 11 USC § 502 sets forth the requirements for allowance...

By The Honorable William Houston Brown (Retired) Debtors’ attorney fees not authorized under Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA). Although the Chapter 13 debtors had prevailed before the Ninth Circuit, In re Sisk, 962 F.3d 1133 (9th Cir. 2020), their application for attorney fees as prevailing parties under EAJA was denied. That Act did not authorize awards of attorney fees...

In a recent opinion, the 9th Circuit BAP affirmed a bankruptcy judge’s decision that sanctions order by a state court were nondischargeable under § 523(a)(6)i and that the state court proceeding precluded litigating the issue in bankruptcy.ii The sanctions originate from a California doctor’s defamation suit against two former patients. The Doctor initiated the action against two women who wrote...

By Peter Fessenden, Chapter 13 Standing Trustee, Retired September 30, 2017 (Portland, ME) To everything there is a season. There was a time to discover how little I knew about being a Chapter 13 trustee. There was a time to make mistakes. There was a time to address those mistakes. There was a time to solve problems. There was a...

In the case of In re Ilyev, 17-12987-KHK (Bankr. E.D. VA July 26, 2022), Judge Kenney granted the Chapter 13 Trustee’s motion to modify the plan to require the Debtor to repay some of the $29,250 of disposable income he retained by not making his mortgage payments during an 18-month Covid forbearance. The Debtor never disclosed to the Trustee, or...

Taxpayers with expiring individual taxpayer identification numbers should renew their number ASAP. There are nearly 2 million ITINs set to expire at the end of 2019. Taxpayers with an expiring number should renew before the end of this year. This will help avoid unnecessary delays related to their tax refunds next year. ITINs are used by taxpayers required to file...

By Jay S. Jump, CEO, CertificateofService.com (Pasco, WA) My guess is you initially saw the title of this article and promptly pressed right on past it. Who needs to learn how to properly address an envelope? You didn’t spend three years in law school plus all that money in student loans to address an envelope! But, If the purpose of...