2002

The Clerk's Offices of U.S. Bankruptcy Courts offer the bankruptcy community a plethora of services that often are underutilized and may be unknown to many constituencies. Many clerk's offices have adopted a customer-service approach in organizational design and

In April's Consumer Corner, we began to consider whether the middle class is about to shatter. While the April article examined the trend between 1980 and 2000, this article focuses on the 90s—a decade that saw bankruptcies explode during an eight-year period of

The consumer creditor community recently received a gift from an unlikely source—the First Circuit Court of Appeals. In the case of Jamo v. Katahdin Federal Credit Union (In re Jamo), 1 the appeals court set aside the holding of the bankruptcy court and the First

The Bankruptcy Code does not exist in a vacuum. Inevitably, there will be overlap between the Code and other federal and state statutes. Federal pre-emption resolves many conflicts arising with state laws. However, where the Bankruptcy Code collides with another federal

The consumer debt counseling industry is at a crisis point. After avoiding the limelight for 30 years, debt counselors are finally receiving the scrutiny and evaluation that their importance to the public requires. Consumer Reports presented a thoughtful, generally

Judicial estoppel, the concept that a party is estopped from taking inconsistent positions in different judicial proceedings, is being applied with increasing regularity when the debtor's schedules omit reference to a pending or a potential cause of action. The failure