The Religious Liberty and Charitable Donation Protection Act of 1998 ("Religious Liberty Act") was the latest move in the battle between the Supreme Court and Congress over a debtor's right to tithe in bankruptcy. The Act directly targets a…

Tying approval of a debtor's reaffirmation of mortgage debt to the reaffirmation of other unsecured debt violates the automatic stay, according to a recent decision in the First Circuit. In re Jamo, 262 B.R. 159 (1st Cir. BAP 2001). The rem…

Financing the American Dream, subtitled "A Cultural History of American Credit," takes a hard look at the effect that consumer credit facilities have on the social values in modern American culture. The author, an assistant professor of his…

Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §1930, all chapter 7 debtors are currently required to pay a filing fee, although some debtors pay the fee in installments. For the first time, under S. 420 and H.R. 333, the court may waive payment of the filing fee i…

A fundamental distinction exists between a consumer chapter 7 case and a chapter 13 case. This distinction pervades the way each case proceeds through the judicial system. A chapter 7 case is static: non-exempt assets held by a debtor at th…

Over the course of the last several months, three submissions to the ABI Journal have dealt with proof-of-claim documentation and related issues. 1 This topic has sharply divided bankruptcy practitioners into the obvious segments of credito…