A referral fee by retained special counsel paid to debtor’s attorney violates the prohibition in § 504 in that the referral fee constitutes an unauthorized splitting of attorney’s fees. (Williamson) In re Davis, 638 B.R. 198 (Bankr. M.D. Fla. March 31, 2022) Case Summary Four years after Lisa Davis filed her Chapter 13 petition, she was involved in an auto...

By Lawrence R. Ahern, III, Brown & Ahern (Nashville, TN) Introduction The Academy has focused at length on the Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019 (SBRA).1 SBRA deals on its face with a non-consumer topic, but it is of interest also to Chapter 12 and 13 trustees and debtors, creating a new, more debtor-friendly subchapter V of Chapter 11 for...

TFS Bill Pay has launched a new powerful tool to help you succeed; the Attorney Report Center located in your AttorneyPortal. In the current bankruptcy environment, it is absolutely essential that your firm receives all of the compensation for the valuable work it has already done. TFS now provides you with pre-set, real-time reports to confirm your clients’ payments, which...

When do the facts justify a long bar to refiling over the 180-day period in § 109(g)? Sometimes it is Justice Stewart’s infamous words from Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 187 (1964)–“I know it when I see it.” Even so, a Trustee must provide evidence and authority to the Court for a long prejudice period. In In re Parson 2021...

By Cathy Moran, Esq. (Redwood City, CA) I wrote earlier about calculating the projected income tax deduction on the means test when the year of filing situation looks much like last year. But what if things aren't the same year over year? Your job as a bankruptcy attorney becomes more complicated. It's suddenly more than figuring the tax refund or...

Remember Mort. Corp. of the South v. Bozeman (In re Bozeman), 57 F. 4th 895 (11th Cir. 2023)? That was the recent 11th Circuit case previously reviewed by Lawrence Ahern on this site. It was the Chapter 13 version of The Perfect Storm.  The Debtor proposed to pay the principal balance of her mortgage ($17 . . . It looks...