You know the story: real estate prices rose through the 2000s, businesses prospered, and home ownership grew with the houses. Houses that the owners financed with low-interest mortgages that they thought they could easily pay off. Then the bubble burst. Unemployment soared, and the homeowners who could not afford to pay down their mortgages also …
Lessons Learned from Comparing the U.S. Mortgage System to Spain’s Read More »
This is the second post in a two-part series on the Department of Education’s Income-Based Repayment (IBR) program for federally backed student loans. Under an IBR plan New Yorkers and other Americans with eligible loans can make lower monthly payments to the government based on their disposable income if their income is too low to …
Income-Based Repayment Plans for Student Loans in 10 Points (Part 2 of 2) Read More »
Aside from mortgage debt, one of the more common problems New York debtors face is student loans. These debts can be challenging for debtors to deal with because in 1998 the federal government subjected all federally backed student debt to the undue hardship test for bankruptcy dichargeability. In 2005, it extended it to private student …
Income-Based Repayment Plans for Student Loans in 10 Points (Part 1 of 2) Read More »
The most common route for filing bankruptcy in New York is file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. It’s quicker than Chapter 13 and allows people to discharge many types of debt. In some cases, though, a person may be ineligible for Chapter 7 and must file in Chapter 13, which is often called a “wage earners …
Chapter 13 Debt Limits Won’t Stymie Your New Bankruptcy Read More »
Finding a questionable or incorrect charge on a credit card statement probably happens to most New Yorkers at least once. Most people’s natural inclination is to call the creditor and try to work it out over the phone. If that doesn’t work, the law is on your side, but it’s a slow process involving the …
How to Challenge Charges on Your Credit Card Bill Read More »
Sometimes an odd situation appears in New York bankruptcies. A debtor gets everything in order, files for bankruptcy, and then discovers that one of his or her bank accounts is frozen even though the bank isn’t one of the debtor’s creditors. It’s bizarre but it can happen. One would think the automatic stay would protect …
The New York Times recently published an article about debt collectors who resort to using pseudonyms when calling debtors. They justify this behavior because they claim the debtors their agents call routinely threaten them with violence. The Times did manage to point out that the Federal Trade Commission reported that the number of complaints against …
Debt collectors using pseudonyms in New York may be breaking the law Read More »
Most people only consider filing bankruptcy in New York as a last resort to their financial problems. They’ve usually missed payments on some of their loans, often credit card or mortgage debt, and their credit ratings will have dropped rapidly with a series of missed payments. In many circumstances, though, people find that their credit …
Filing bankruptcy in New York can actually improve your credit score Read More »
As you can imagine, the light at the end of the New York bankruptcy tunnel is a discharge order from a bankruptcy judge. A discharge means that creditors cannot attempt to extract payments on these debts and must write them off themselves. It also means that you now have an opportunity to start over and …
Collecting on discharged debts in New York is illegal Read More »
Imagine you are sitting in your New York home enjoying dinner with your family. The phone rings. Mispronouncing your name, the person on the other end asks if you’re available. You ask who it is. The voice says he selling new decks and that you badly need a new one. You hang up the phone …
Auto-Dialed by a Collector in New York? Know Your Rights! Read More »
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