Hank Wins One at the BAP

What’s a governmental creditor to do when a court finds that the state’s own laws do not permit the government to recover the funds to which it believes it is entitled? Clearly, the state changes the law.

In re Bratt, 2016 WL 1645147 (6th Cir. BAP April 26, 2016)

In 2012, the City of Nashville decided to get aggressive against Chapter 13 debtors who were proposing to pay their property taxes through their Chapter 13 plans. Nashville’s legal team . . .

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One Woman’s Opinion

December 13, 2020

By Margaret A. Burks, Chapter 13 Standing Trustee for the Southern District of Ohio (Cincinnati) Chapter 13 works. Some people wish to continually criticize Chapter 13. They criticize the success rate. They criticize racial bias. They criticize how Chapter 13 works. They also criticize the fact that Chapter 13 appears less voluntary than it was before access to Chapter 7...

The Hunt for Deductible Interest – Money Too Often Left on the Table

February 16, 2020

By Cathy Moran, Esq. (Redwood City, CA) One of the mysteries of Chapter 13 is why mortgage lenders don’t send an IRS 1098 for mortgage payments made through a Chapter 13 plan. And without that reminder piece of paper, our clients don’t realize that much of what the trustee pays to mortgage creditors is deductible interest. Miss that deduction and...

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Trustee Cannot Require Debtor to Treat Nondischargeable Student Loan Debts in a Separate Class

August 25, 2019

By Gretchen D. Holland, Standing Chapter 13 Trustee for the Greenville/Spartanburg Division of South Carolina The Bankruptcy Code does not – and thus a trustee cannot – require a debtor to treat nondischargeable student loan debts in a separate class from other general unsecured claims under § 1322(b)(1), even when including them all in the same pool will result in...

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From the Editor – Avoidance

September 22, 2019

By The Honorable William Houston Brown (Retired) Chapter 7 trustee’s avoidance of post-petition mortgage lien. After filing Chapter 7, the debtor, without prior authority, refinanced property of the estate twice and the trustee sought avoidance of the mortgage lien under § 549. No defense was available because the mortgagee did not qualify as a good faith transferee, having knowledge of...

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Did You Really Rely Upon That?

Angela M. Scolforo

September 11, 2022

The Mississippi Bankruptcy Court in The Huntington National Bank vs. Ashley Mosby, case #21-11614, adversary case #21-1028, on September 1, 2022, denied the bank’s request to declare a debt non-dischargeable because the bank did not rely upon the debtor’s false statement. In this case the Debtor purchased a 2020 Dodge Challenger, financed by the bank, without disclosing she intended to...

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Assumption of Auto Lease in Chapter 7 Requires No Court Approval Says the 9th Circuit: In re Bobka

May 9, 2021

By Matthew D. Resnik, Resnik Hayes Moradi, LLP (Encino, CA) In Bobka v. Toyota Motor Credit Corporation (In re Bobka), 968 F.3d 946 (9th Cir. August, 2020), the chapter 7 debtor wanted to retain her leased Toyota. Toyota sent her an "assumption agreement" which she signed and returned to Toyota the day before she received her discharge. By then she...

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Recent Trends in the Interpretation of Midland v. Johnson and the Applicability of the FDCPA to Bankruptcy Cases – Part II: Thomas v. Midland Funding, LLC

February 7, 2021

By Mark C. Leffler, Boleman Law Firm, PC, Richmond, Hampton, and Va. Beach, Virginia In order to “eliminate abusive debt collection practices by debt collectors . . .”, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”) bars debt collectors from using any “false, deceptive, or misleading representation or means in connection with the collection of any debt . . .” 15...

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Escrow 101 – Part 3 of 3

September 19, 2021

By Michael J. McCormick, Esq., McCalla Raymer Leibert Pierce, LLC (Roswell, GA) Frequently Asked Questions 1) Is a servicer required to have a borrower maintain a reserve or cushion? NO. See Regulation X Section (c)(1)(ii).1 A lender or servicer (hereafter servicer) shall not require a borrower to deposit into any escrow account, created in connection with a federally related mortgage...

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Creditors’ Rights and Debtors’ Protections at the Intersection of Consumer Bankruptcy and UCC Article 9

August 30, 2020

By Lawrence R. Ahern III, Brown & Ahern (Nashville, TN) PART II – BASICS OF PERFECTION OF SECURITY INTERESTS Introduction Current circumstances, with a pandemic and a recession, portend a wave of bankruptcy filings. In the consumer bankruptcy field, trustees and debtors' counsel often are uncomfortable with the rules in UCC Article 9. In this space, we have previously looked...

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U.S. Trustee Fee Unconstitutional

The Honorable William Houston Brown

June 12, 2022

On June 6, the Supreme Court’s unanimous opinion in Siegel v. Fitzgerald1 held that the increase in U.S. Trustee fees in Chapter 11 cases violated the uniformity requirement of the Constitution’s Bankruptcy Clause,2 because the fee increase in 2017 only applied to in the U.S. Trustee districts and didn’t apply to the Bankruptcy Administrator districts in Alabama and North Carolina....