The most beneficial protection provided to individuals and corporate entities filing during bankruptcy proceedings is the “automatic stay”. The automatic stay is immediately invoked upon the filing of a bankruptcy petition and prevents any creditor from taking actions to collect a pre-petition debt. This article will explore whether any other individual or corporate entity also obligated to the same debt (also know as a “co-debtor”) is protected by the automatic stay, even if they did not seek bankruptcy relief.
While individual debtors are permitted to use power of attorneys during bankruptcy proceedings, there are rare circumstances that obtaining a guardian ad litem for an incompetent individual may be beneficial to administering the bankruptcy estate. As such, this blog will analyze the law and rare request for a guardian ad litem for purposes of a bankruptcy proceeding.
Most homeowners don’t pay enough attention to educating themselves about the foreclosure process. Look at it this way, if you’re buying a home and don’t know the foreclosure process and your options, you’re like a soldier without a rifle - you are flying blind my home-owning friend. Educating yourself about the foreclosure process and your options should be one of the first things a homeowner should do before or after buying a home. This blog will explore the foreclosure process and how you could save your home or investment property through a bankruptcy.
When filing for bankruptcy, you must file a bankruptcy petition. The Bankruptcy Code requires that the bankruptcy petition contain all of your assets. An asset, which you might not think is an asset, includes a lawsuit or potential lawsuit that arises from an event that occurred prior to your bankruptcy filing.
Recently, I successfully represented a debtor in an adversary proceeding brought by creditors (the Plaintiffs) seeking to have the debt owed to them declared non-dischargeable pursuant to 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(6). In this case, my client’s entity, in which he was the sole shareholder, formerly owned and operated a bar in Colorado for a short period of time. During the time that his entity owned the bar, employees complained of sexual harassment at the hands of the bar’s manager, who was the Debtor’s brother-in-law. This blog will explore the facts and circumstances of this case along with the legal standard to explore why the Judge ultimately found that the Debtor was entitled to judgment as a matter of law.
In a recent experience with a client (“Jane Doe”), she began by telling me that after six months of infusing her franchise with cash directly from her retirement accounts, the franchise was doing poorly and she had no idea how to get out of the hole. To add salt to the wound, she had personally guaranteed i) the lease to the commercial space; ii) the franchise agreement; and the small business loan that the business needed to get started. This is obviously a worse case scenario for a business owners, especially if the business isn’t making any profit because its only a matter of time before the business shuts down and the creditors start coming after the business owner. After an hour of getting a sense of her personal and business finances, I began to explain to Mrs. Doe, the different options she had and how these “Executory Contracts” would be treated within her bankruptcy.
It is nearly impossible to predict what the future holds in life. Therefore, when you enter a five-year chapter 13 bankruptcy plan, you never know what life changes may be thrown your way during the plan period. You may lose your job, obtain a significant increase in income, or receive an inheritance amongst other possibilities. This blog will explore how common life changes will impact your chapter 13 plan and what your options are to react to those changes.
In many instances, marital couples intertwine their financial affairs. This causes the vast majority of both real and personal property owned by the marital couple to be jointly owned property. This blog will explore the effect that jointly owned property has on a bankruptcy case for purposes of residential real property and jointly owned bank accounts.
Often, individuals who are contemplating bankruptcy have some equity in their residence and are debating whether it will be better to file a chapter 7 or chapter 13 bankruptcy proceeding. This blog will explore what happens when you file a chapter 7 bankruptcy and how you should evaluate your decision making.
According to the Internal Revenue Service, the average refund this tax season has decreased by 8.4%. This, of course, is mainly due to the recent changes in tax laws and the loss of certain tax deductions that were available in previous years. With the April 15th tax deadline right around the corner, this could potentially mean that you could be owing taxes when you really expected a tax refund. And if you already owe income taxes for previous tax years, you could be facing an even larger tax debt when the dust settles. With that said, you still have options, and the filing of a bankruptcy can help minimize your already existing tax debt. This blog will explore how bankruptcy can help you get rid of some of that tax debt.
