In 2009, Congress passed the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act (CARD Act). Its goal was to prevent banks from taking advantage of credit-card users with excessive fees (mainly over-limit fees and late fees) and other tactics. A few of its notable provisions include setting minimum payment deadlines to 21 days after bills are
If debtors in chapter 7 New York bankruptcy earn a “current monthly income” that if multiplied by 12 exceeds the state’s median family income (~$49,000 for single earners in New York), then they must take the means test to determine if their bankruptcy filings are not abusive. The test, which appears in section 707 of
It’s not unheard of for debtors filing New York bankruptcy to own property that can’t be fully protected by an exemption. Although the state’s homestead exemption is quite generous compared to the federal exemptions, it might not cover all equity in a property. Alternatively, debtors might be concerned with equity in non-real estate property, or
Tax returns are a common fixture in New York bankruptcy, so much so that debtors are well advised to file their taxes before they file bankruptcy. Because U.S. tax season has begun, it’s a message worth explaining sooner rather than later. In all bankruptcy chapters, the Bankruptcy Code requires debtors to provide the trustee with
If there were no doubts that the Affordable Care Act was sufficient to prevent medical bankruptcy, then a recent post in The New York Times‘ Upshot blog should correct that perception. True, the ACA reduced the number of uninsured Americans by 15 million since 2013, but the Times, along with the Kaiser Family Foundation, surveyed
The title isn’t exactly what The New York Times‘ Dealbook blog post wrote about in December, but it’s the lesson one should draw from it. Debt collectors can use the courts to sue debtors, but when debtors sue back, collectors can hide behind arbitration clauses to make the suits go away. The Times characterized it
When it comes to student-loan debt, state governments don’t usually help a lot. That’s not surprising because most of the loans come from the federal government, which offers a variety of repayment options. However, New York State’s Higher Education Services Corporation (HECS) initiated a new program at the beginning of the year to help out.
Debtors exiting New York bankruptcy often receive IRS Form 1099-C, which creditors send to debtors and the IRS to inform both that it has canceled debts owed to them by the debtors. You can find the 2016 version here (pdf). Creditors are obligated to send these when they have canceled debts exceeding $600. Debtors, then,
First came credit cards in the 1970s, then debit cards in the 1990s, and now there are what the financial industry refers to as “stored-value cards”: cards that function independently of a line of credit or a demand account. The cards’ balances are pre-funded, much like secured credit cards, which I wrote about here. Stored-value
Rating agencies’ opinions of financial assets isn’t much concern to the New York bankruptcy world, but notably in mid-December both Moody’s and Fitch issued press releases documenting their pessimistic outlooks on a very unique type of financial asset: Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) Asset-Backed Securities (ABS). The FFELP is the defunct federal program in
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