Consumer Corner

The grounds for setting aside reaffirmation agreements are limited after the time to rescind has expired. Reaffirmation agreements are not favored by bankruptcy courts and are strictly construed based on conventional contract principles. 1 Debtor's counsel should

In order to confirm a chapter 13 plan, the court must find that the plan meets the "best interests of creditors." The Eighth Circuit recently arrived at an equitable formula in deciding whether the debtor's interest in an estate in the entirety is property of the

For a number of years, bankruptcy courts have been wrestling with the issue of the status of a debtor's chapter 13 estate once a plan of reorganization has been confirmed. Not surprisingly, the resolution of this issue works a significant impact upon the rights of a

Editor's Note: For more analysis of automatic stay abuses and in rem orders, see Chaves, "In Rem Bankruptcy Refiling Bars: Will They Stop Abuse of the Automatic Stay Against Mortgagees?," 24 Cal. Bankr. J. 1 (Winter 1997). Among the many consumer bankruptcy proposals

In last month's "Consumer Corner" column, Tom Ray discussed the significant split among the Courts of Appeal over whether a debtor is required to reaffirm an indebtedness in order to retain collateral, or whether the debtor can simply retain the property and continue

Since this author’s last column on post-confirmation interest rates in chapter 13 cases, several court decisions have been added to the mix. Not the least of these is Associates Commercial Corporation v. Rash, 117 S.Ct. 1879, 138 L.Ed.2d 148 (1997) in which the court

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 the time of filing become