Assessing In re Topp’s Impact on Interest Rates for Secured Creditors By Michael Miller The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit decided Farm Credit Servs. of Am. FLCA v. Topp (In re Topp) on Aug. 3, 2023. 1 The central issue was th…

Standing Trustees Should Be Paid in Unconfirmed Cases By Grant Rosinko Recent decisions in several circuits have denied compensation to standing trustees when a chapter 13 case is dismissed prior to plan confirmation. There is now a split o…

Legislative Highlights U.S. Judicial Conference Aims to Promote Random Case Assignment The Judicial Conference of the United States on March 12 proposed strengthening the policy governing random case assignment, limiting the ability of liti…

President’s Column As I write my final column, I am reflecting on what an ever-advancing organization ABI is. For more than four decades, ABI has been the force of the insolvency and restructuring industry. Under the leadership of each pres…

Credit-Rating Agency Reform in the Shadow of Dodd-Frank By Arielle Allen Editor’s Note: To commemorate their roles in the bankruptcy community and carry their legacies forward to future generations of law students, the Hon. Larry E. Kelly B…

2023 Legislative Roundup By Brittany M. Woodman Compared to 2022, 2023 saw an 18 percent increase in total bankruptcy filings. 1 While bankruptcy filings increased and U.S. Supreme Court decisions hoped to deliver clarity among circuits, pr…

Avoidance Exposure for Transfers of Exemptible Assets By Brett D. Lieberman and Olivia Webb Bankruptcy courts are regularly tasked with analyzing situations in which debtors attempt to transform, through transfer or otherwise, nonexempt pro…

Property Disclosure Duties in Chapter 13 By Sumner A. Bourne The consumer bankruptcy system, where the economic resources for investigating debtors’ financial affairs are especially limited, relies on accurate and predictably timed debtor-f…

Everyone Wants a Piece: Handling Post-Petition Funds in Chapter 13 By Christopher Conte Let’s picture this hypothetical: An individual debtor files a typical chapter 13 case. The debtor is above median in income and shows disposable income …

Must Debtors Contribute Exempt Assets to Pay Creditors? By Lisa Boardman Burnette Is a chapter 13 debtor required to use exempt personal-injury settlement proceeds to pay creditors in a plan that provides less than 100 percent payment to un…