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‘Avoiding’ Liens in New York Bankruptcy

Most of the time when the term “avoid” comes up in New York bankruptcy it’s used in the context of preferential transfers to creditors. That is, the debtor transfers money to a creditor he or she likes more than the others, such as a relative, and the trustee chooses to nullify (“avoid”) the transfer. The …

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Supreme Court to Decide Whether Denied Chapter 13 Plans Can Be Appealed

Make that two cases the U.S. Supreme Court will decide next year that might affect people filing New York bankruptcy. On December 12, 2014, the Court granted certiorari to petitioner Louis B. Bullard, whose chapter 13 repayment plan was denied confirmation. The other case the Court will hear is Bank of America v. Toledo-Cardona, which …

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Supreme Court to Decide Underwater Junior Mortgage Lien-Stripping Case

Usually when bankruptcy lawyers discuss the benefits of successive New York bankruptcy filings, the “chapter 20” strategy comes up (less so the “reverse chapter 20“). Debtors who discharge an underwater junior mortgage in chapter 7 must continue to make the mortgage payments if they wish to avoid foreclosure. They can file a chapter 13 case …

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File Chapter 13, Live Longer

Last week I discussed an article in The New York Times‘ Dealbook blog that described banks that were failing to report bankruptcy debtors’ debts as discharged. A minor criticism that wasn’t worth raising at the time was the article’s melodramatic characterization of bankruptcy as taking a “heavy toll” on debtors. Actually, New York bankruptcy isn’t …

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Beware Deficiency Judgments From Fannie Mae

The New York Times tells us that the robo-signed foreclosure documents are rearing their ugly heads again. Back in 2010, it came to light that banks were trying to foreclose on houses without verifying the information on the loan documents. The result was a slew of wrongful foreclosures on homeowners who were good on their …

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St. Louis Fed Sees Little Improvement for Underwater Homeowners

If the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that money and debt problems are causing a “bottleneck” in homeownership, then the Fed’s Saint Louis branch has made its own unpleasant discovery using the same data: In the last three years the percentage of households with negative equity has barely budged. An analysis of the …

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‘Generation X’s’ Income High, But Debts Even Higher

This is the basic finding the Pew Charitable Trusts’ report on the financial situation of “Generation X” (“Gen X”), which it defines as all Americans born between 1965 and 1980. Generational designations are really kind of arbitrary—why does Gen X only get 15 years?—and mobility studies often ask their readers to accept silly assumptions. One …

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Bruce Weiner Successfully Defends Creditor In Another Complicated Bankruptcy Proceeding

Partner and Brooklyn bankruptcy attorney Bruce Weiner successfully won yet another “complex” case involving claims and counterclaims, which was cited in Bankruptcy Reporter. Read the judge’s decision here: In re Merhi, 518 B.R. 705 (Bankr. E.D.N.Y. 2014). His client, the creditor, sold a house to the debtor with a balloon mortgage. When it came time …

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Chapter 7 Discharge and Mortgage Payments

Chapter 7 New York bankruptcy is usually used by people with significant unsecured debts and little reliable income to repay them. Homeowners filing chapter 7 usually intend to stay in their homes or at most discharge a mortgage deficiency after selling them. Sometimes a domestic partner is eligible for chapter 7 because he or she …

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