By Academy Staff Section 1307(b) provides: On request of the debtor at any time, if the case has not been converted under Section 706, Section 1112, or Section 1208, the court shall dismiss a case under this chapter. This seemingly straightforward provision has generated significant litigation and produced multiple conflicting decisions. Does a Debtor have a right to dismiss a...

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...

Failure of Chapter 13 debtors to satisfy post-petition property tax payments to the county, specifically required in the debtors’ Chapter 13 plan, renders the debtors ineligible for a discharge, even where the debtors proposed a loan modification to repay the mortgage creditor which had advanced the post-petition taxes. (Rodriguez) In re Villarreal, 2022 WL 1102223 (Bankr. S.D. Tex. April 12,...

By Cathy Moran, Esq., (Redwood City, CA) Have I got a story for you. A rousing tale of schedules, hearings, frustrations, and ultimately fortunes, traceable to a good story in the fee application. Maybe that's a bit overblown, but I'm telling this story with a purpose. Good stories lead to fair compensation for bankruptcy attorneys. Fee applications aren't hard Filing...

By Henry E. Hildebrand, III, Standing Chapter 13 Trustee for the Middle District of TN (Nashville) A creditor may request an extension of time to file a claim under Rule 3002, F.R.B.P. only where the conditions of that rule have been fully satisfied; the filing of a defective list of creditors does not permit an extension of the time for...

By Lawrence R. Ahern, III, Brown & Ahern (Nashville, TN) Introduction Since April 1, 2020, many unemployed people in the United States have begun to receive "a recovery benefit" in the amount of $1,200.1 These payments, under the CARES Act2 stimulus program, were intended to provide some relief to suffering Americans. However, the most financially distressed Americans, perhaps with existing,...

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...

IRS has begun sending letters to virtual currency owners advising them to pay back taxes, file amended returns; part of agency’s larger efforts. On July 26th, the IRS announced that it has begun sending letters to taxpayers with virtual currency transactions that potentially failed to report income and pay the resulting tax from virtual currency transactions or did not report...

By Lawrence R. Ahern III, Brown & Ahern (Nashville, TN) Exemptions are determined at the time the debtor files for bankruptcy. … This maxim is called the "snapshot" rule because the debtor's financial situation is frozen in time, as if someone had taken a snapshot of it.1 Recent Caselaw The First and Ninth Circuits On March 1, the Ninth Circuit...