Consumer Corner

When can debtors avoid judicial liens impairing their bankruptcy exemptions in a homestead? Does state law have an effect? Does it make a difference when the debtor acquired an interest in the property? These and other questions were thoroughly discussed in the Spring

aving used Christie's auction house to sell assets some time ago in a bankruptcy case was enough to have put me on its mailing list ever since to receive its catalogs. Occasionally, I'll glance at one for a moment while going through my mail before sending it into my

In East Cambridge Savings Bank v. Silveira (In re Silveira), 141 F.3d 34 (1st Cir. 1998), the First Circuit Court of Appeals decided that 11 U.S.C. §522(f) 1 permits only partial avoidance of judicial liens in situations where a debtor has equity in excess of his or her

The possibility of a bankruptcy filing has always affected the pre-bankruptcy conduct of both debtors and creditors. Yet several of the changes the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA) made to the Bankruptcy Code go even further in an

It is not unusual for consumer debtors to have borrowed from a qualified retirement or savings plan pre-petition to meet cash needs. Typically the debtor schedules the plan as a creditor with a claim in the amount of the outstanding balance due on the plan loan. 1 But

While we begin to digest all of the new opinions on the complicated and sometimes ambiguous provisions of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA), it may also be a good time to recall one of the more mundane and by now familiar