When it comes to Bankruptcy, many Debtors don't know what they don’t know about real estate taxes. Confused? So were the District Courts until the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals addressed the issue in the case of In re LaMont, Opinion 13-1187 (January 7, 2014).Read More
This piece from the Wall Street Journal’s Real Time Economics site answers the question with charts galore! The short answer comes in 3 parts: 1) For working people, 2013 was more of the same slow, jobless recovery; 2) For high net-worth individuals and corporations it was a bonanza; and; 3) The housing sector underwent a...Read More
The hallmark of the Business Opportunity Doctrine is the use of company assets to benefit a fiduciary. For instance the Doctrine would not allow a Director or Officer to profit personally by acquiring property they have reason to know the company will need or intends to acquire. In other words, fiduciaries shouldn't step in to...Read More
Priority disputes can be played out in Bankruptcy court. Take the case of In re Jones, in which Chapter 11 Debtors owned several pieces of property encumbered with mortgages cross-collateralized with other property of the Estate. That's when the trouble started...Read More
Chances are that any equity you had in your home disappeared between 2008 and 2011 and hasn't been seen since. What will happen in 2013? One thing for sure though: if a write-down is not an option many people will find themselves looking to programs like HAMP and HARP to manage their payments, and others...Read More
Yes Virginia, it is possible to both discharge unsecured debts forever (Chapter 7) and strip down secondary mortgages (Chapter 13). But why would a Debtor file two cases when it's hard enough to put themselves through one? Read on and find out.Read More
Your customer or borrower has been paying like clockwork and you, the creditor or vendor, have been dispensing goods and services as promised. Then your customer starts to pay a little later, then later still. Why not? Times are tough. So you do the decent thing and take their payments without complaining. Next thing you...Read More
What happens when the property taxes of a Chapter 13 Debtor, protected by the Automatic Stay, are sold at auction? Here the Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, had to decide whether a Chapter 13 Plan of Reorganization affects the deadline for the Debtor to redeem sold taxes. The answer is,...Read More
Small business remains the backbone of the most vibrant economy in the world. America leads in innovation and hard work thanks in large part to small businesses and their owners. But in lean times, business owners need to know they have options. This post is about those options.Read More
