Sometimes people will refer to bankruptcy as a shield and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) as a sword, or vice versa. It’s contradictory, but the point is that both laws are designed to protect debtors in different contexts that hopefully don’t overlap. Bankruptcy allows debtors to get rid of debts without punishing overbearing
A long time ago, I discussed the requirements in New York for a successful deed-in-lieu of foreclosure agreement, also called a mortgage release. The benefits of such an agreement are that the lender is able to resell the property and the borrower is no longer obligated to pay on an ultimately unaffordable mortgage. The question,
Private student loans do not often make the news, primarily because the vast majority of student loans are made by or guaranteed by the federal government, and comparatively few people take them out these days. Currently only $108 billion out of the $1.34 trillion in student loans are originated by private lenders with no connection
Around 2012, bankruptcy lawyers began reporting a strange trend: their clients’ bankruptcies were hijacked by third parties, causing significant problems for the debtors’ cases. The fad didn’t reach the East Coast to a significant degree, but New York bankruptcy hijacking is possible. Debtors, especially those who’ve gone without lawyers, should learn what the signs are
What factors influence the likelihood of filing New York bankruptcy? That’s not exactly the question the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Minn., asked in its research on “income risk,” but it addresses the question in some ways. Economists often write about “income inequality,” but that’s just the distribution of income at any given time. Income
Tax debts can bedevil debtors. They are not easily discharged in a chapter 7 New York bankruptcy, and they are priority claims that must be paid in full without interest in chapter 13. Unsurprisingly, the IRS’s collection efforts will cause more anxiety to debtors than mere credit-card-debt collectors. However, a recent New York Times article
The majority of consumer New York bankruptcy cases are filed in chapter 7 rather than chapter 13, usually for understandable reasons. Debtors choosing chapter 7 probably have few assets, low incomes, and they are mostly looking to discharge unsecured debts. Although chapter 13 might not appear right for many, it does discharge some unsecured debts
In the last few years you may have heard something in the news that has not happened for a while: The Federal Reserve is gently raising its target interest rate, the effective “federal funds rate.” The Fed held this rate at about zero from late 2007 until the end of 2015, but fearing an overheating
In May I wrote about how debt collectors were adopting new technologies to target borrowers, specifically noting a new technique called, “ringless voice mails.” The New York Times recently ran a full article on the topic, and along with the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling that debt buyers are exempt from the Fair Debt Collections
With a new presidential administration comes new priorities, and for the Trump government’s Department of Education that means revising recently instituted rules that were ostensibly designed to benefit student-loan debtors. If these rules are repealed, then debtors will need to explore either bankruptcy or non-bankruptcy options to resolve their financial problems. According to The New
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