Consumer Bankruptcy

The lawsuit was under federal law, not state law, even though Section 544(b)(1) incorporated state fraudulent transfer law.

The bankruptcy court can divide marital property, but just because it can doesn’t mean it should, Judge Thuma says.

The Fourth Circuit declined to follow the First and Sixth Circuits on preemption of automatic stay violations by expanding the ban to redress for discharge violations.

Looking beyond the label assigned by the Affordable Care Act, three circuits have now held that failure to pay the ‘individual mandate’ for purchasing health insurance gave rise to a tax entitled to priority in bankruptcy.

Congress’s decision to use the passive voice has cost at least one debtor the discharge of a significant debt. The U.S. Supreme Court in Bartenwerfer v. Buckley ended a long journey through the Ninth Circuit for a debtor whose husband committed fraud and when she sought to discharge the debt that resulted from a judgment for that fraudulent action.[1] Instead of analyzing whether the debtor was culpable in the fraud, the Supreme Court instead held that the debt — not the debtor — was the subject of 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(2)(A), and since the debt itself resulted from fraud, it could not be discharged.

Consumer and business bankruptcy attorneys alike have been conditioned to feel fear or awe, depending on the circumstances, at hearing the name Clifford White for almost 20 years. When White announced in 2022 that he would retire, consumer practitioners had been looking forward to the announcement of the new director, mostly to identify the focus that the U.S. Trustee Program would take. Could we anticipate a director with a business focus as interest rates grow and the controversial Texas Two-Step is in limbo, or a consumer-experienced director with the anticipated rise in consumer filings and the struggles of inflation coming to light?