From the Editor’s Desk – Plan Confirmation

By The Honorable William Houston Brown (Retired)

Separate classification of municipal court fines. In two cases in which below-median debtors had proposed to separately classify and pay in full municipal court fines, while paying other unsecured creditors nothing, the court held that the separate classification was unfairly discriminatory. Assuming that the justification was in part due to potential incarceration for nonpayment of the fines, and noting that § 523(a)(7) debts are not exceptions from Chapter 13 discharge, the court held that the potential for incarceration was not enough to justify the discriminatory treatment. The . . .

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