Editor's Note: See Related Article on p. 10. (Legislative Update) Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) significantly changes chapter 11 cases of individuals. After reviewing how chapter 11 works in an individual'…

Editor's Note: Part I was published in the May 2006 issue and Part II was published in the June 2006 issue of the ABI Journal. With an understanding of how post-confirmation fees and charges can arise and why no attempt to collect those fee…

Under the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978, 1 there was a split of authority as to the disposition of funds paid to the chapter 13 trustee after commencement of a case where the case was converted to a chapter 7 case before confirmation of a p…

Individual Chapter 11 Cases after BAPCPA: Can You Still Close the Case Early? Practitioners, judges and scholars have debated the ins and outs of BAPCPA in countless seminars and scholarly efforts. One area that courts will inevitably addre…

In In re Jones, 327 B.R. 297 (Bankr. S.D. Tex. 2005), Bankruptcy Judge Jeff Bohm addressed a motion by the chapter 7 trustee to deny the debtor's discharge based on a failure to keep and preserve financial records. The chapter 7 trustee had…

The House and Senate sprinted to recess for the Nov. 7 elections without completing action on several pending clarifications to bankruptcy law. Bills covering issues ranging from the treatment of tithing to an increase in chapter 7 trustee …

Part I of this article looks at consumer bankruptcy filing rates and attempts to identify some trends and economic indicators that might predict those filing rates. The $64,000 question (which, adjusted for inflation, today would be the "$4…

To enable a fresh start, debtors often seek to avoid judicial liens that impair a claimed homestead exemption. With adjustable-rate mortgages, rising credit costs and increasing delinquencies, there is likely to be more activity in this mot…