Category Archives: Practical tips

You just got a few thousand dollars from your tax refund and you want to know what to do with it. You know you will likely be filing for bankruptcy in the near future because you can’t keep up on your bills. Does it matter what you do with your tax refund? Yes it does. […]

Bankruptcy isn’t free — not even close. If you’re nose deep in debt, that may sound like a cruel hoax, but that is the reality that has to be dealt with. The actual cost of filing, however, can vary from place to place and from law office to law office. Attorney Susan Robicsek, who practices […]

In order to get a discharge in a consumer bankruptcy case, the 2005 version of the bankruptcy code requires debtors to go to school — that is take and finish a 2 hour course on “financial management” (what used to be called family budgeting), and file the course certificate with the court. No certificate, no […]

Fort Worth bankruptcy attorney Reed Allmand has a great post up about how to tell if your bankruptcy attorney is a lemon. Reed’s top five tipoffs: 1. The attorney has an exclusively on-line presence and you have never met him or her in person. (Note: some disagree with this, and think on-line only lawyering is […]

When you file for bankruptcy, you need to list all of the lawsuits that you are involved in, or have been involved in for the past year. Typically, this will involve listing one or several collection cases that have been filed against you in local forums such as the Lawrence District Court. But it also […]

Schedule G of your bankruptcy petition is the place for declaring your executory contracts. Say what? You are not alone in wondering what the term “executory contracts” means, as it is seldom used in any other area of the law outside the bankruptcy code. Fortunately, the answer is really not too complicated — an executory […]

If you’ve been to bankruptcy court recently, or are thinking of filing, you might be shocked out of your shoes when you receive a 1099-C from one of your creditors. A what??? IRS form 1099-C is issued when there is cancellation of debt that might be considered income. Now you really lost me, you say! […]

Here’s some good advice from California bankruptcy attorney Douglas Jacobs: be sure tell your attorney everything about all your income and expenses. Attorney Jacobs tells a little story about one of his clients who failed to do exactly that. This guy showed up at the meeting of creditors and suddenly “remembered” that he got a […]

If you’re thinking about filing a bankruptcy case, and worried about where you will live after you file, Maryland attorney Brett Weiss has some practical advice: * Skip the large traditional apartment complexes (for example, Royal Crest in North Andover, although there are many others). They often have inflexible rules about credit checks. * Concentrate […]