Author Archives: doug

One of the nation’s largest debt collectors,Portfolio Recovery Associates, has been in the news lately, and this article exposes a hard truth about the collections system: Debt collectors know when your finances improve. Because debt collectors pay the credit bureaus to tell them. I’m a bankruptcy attorney, and I know people want to put off […]

Debtors who have been notified by a state unemployment agency that they have been overpaid — and also that the state would like to be re-paid, pronto — might be able to discharge such a debt with a bankruptcy case. Or they might not be able to. It really depends — on the particular facts […]

On the bankruptcy questionnaire I give to prospective clients, the very first thing I ask them to value is their jewelry. There’s a reason for that: it’s not that jewelry is subject to forfeiture in bankruptcy (in fact, there are generous allotments for debtors to keep jewels), but that it’s something that they are likely […]