By Anthony J. Gomez, CPA, former extern to the Honorable John P. Gustafson, Northern District of Ohio at Toledo V. The Good Faith Requirement The hanging paragraph was enacted to protect creditors. It accomplishes this by prohibiting the bifurcation of certain secured debts that were acquired shortly before the time of filing. Despite a Chapter 13 debtor’s inability to bifurcate...

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....

By The Honorable William Houston Brown (Retired) Debtor could cure default beyond 60 months. Agreeing with In re Klaas, 858 F.3d 820 (3d Cir. 2017), bankruptcy court had discretion to permit debtors to cure plan default, allowing a reasonable grace period beyond the 60 months of confirmed plan. Dismissal of the case for plan default was not required under §...

By Herb Beskin, Chapter 13 Trustee and Edward M. Wayland, Esq. (Charlottesville, VA) Trustees are not privy to the struggles of Debtors as they emerge from Chapter 13 and work to re-establish (establish?) their credit worthiness. A crucial factor in this process is the Debtor’s credit report. In this article, we discuss the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”), the rules...

By Lawrence R. Ahern, III, Brown & Ahern (Nashville, TN) Part IV Two More Things Trustees Should Know About the Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019 Introduction Four bankruptcy-related bills were enacted during the 116th Congress and signed into law on August 23, 2019.1 The legislation affected both business and consumer cases. One bill, the Small Business Reorganization Act of...

Gambling is inherently risky, but that rings even more true when a bankruptcy is involved. Section 727(a)(5) allows for denial of discharge if “the debtor has failed to explain satisfactorily, …. any loss of assets or deficiency of assets to meet the debtor’s liabilities.” 11 U.S.C. §727(a)(5). Recently, Bankruptcy Judge Timothy A. Barnes in Chicago wrote an opinion in which...

By Henry E. Hildebrand, III, Chapter 13 Standing Trustee (Nashville, TN) Chapter 13 debtor cannot submit missed payments to the trustee after the 60-month term of the plan has ended in an effort to cure defaults in the plan. (Bacharach) Kinney v. HSBC Bank USA, N.A., 5 F.4th 1136 (10th Cir. July 23, 2021) Case Summary Margaret Kinney filed a...

(The DuPage County Bar Association grants permission to reprint all or part of this article, Chapter 13 Saves the World! by Arthur Rummler, Volume 29, Issue 9, May 2017 edition of the DCBA Brief. Copyright 2017, DCBA Brief, All Rights Reserved.) We are pleased to reprint an article referred to recently by Director Twomey of the Executive Office for United...