With the property market continuing to improve in Florida, we are seeing more lenders delay and place obstacles in front of borrowers trying to modify their home mortgage in an effort to keep their homes. There are certain court rules and CFPB rules regarding modification that an attorney may be…
Florida has a history of being unusually lenient when it comes to debtor protections in bankruptcy. For one, we’ve opted out of the federal exemptions and have our own. The homestead protections are some of the best in the country. In some ways Florida’s exemptions are good, in others they…
The Golden Rules to Discharge Taxes: If you choose to file a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, your tax debt could be discharged if you meet the following tests: The taxes must be for income. The tax debt must be at least 3 years old (including extensions). You must have filed the…
Many of our recent bankruptcy clients report large amounts of business debt. This may be small business loans, credit cards run up to support a small business, or personal guarantees. Often the business is gone at this point and we are looking to file an individual bankruptcy. Filing a bankruptcy…
This can be a sticky wicket. I’ve never actually used that word in a sentence. 🙂 Normally you can buy a car before filing bankruptcy. In fact, in some cases it can be a good idea (note: as a bankruptcy attorney I am not supposed to tell our clients to…
One of the common questions we get is whether or not someone filing bankruptcy can keep their car. The answer is Yes, but you do have to pay to keep it. How you do that depends upon how much equity is in the car, whether you own or lease, whether…
The FTC guidelines state that credit reports can include debts discharged in bankruptcy so long as they’re reported as discharged with a zero balance. 16 C.F.R. 600 app. § 607(b)(6). See also Schueller 559 Fed.Appx. at 737; Horsch, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 37476, 2015 WL 1344836, at *10. The only…
We are still doing loan mods for our clients – three alone this week – one in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy and two outside of bankruptcy. One has the docs to sign, another was presented with options including a principal reduction, and the other should be finished with underwriting and…
Sometimes our Florida foreclosure defense clients wait too long to challenge a foreclosure. This is the primary reason why we attorneys always post advice and blog incessantly about not letting a mortgage company get a default judgment or challenging a default if one occurs. However, a client can also wait…
Bankruptcy filings are down substantially in 2014 to only 910,090 which is the lowest number since 2007. Yet at the same time, people are still losing their homes especially in Florida, wages are flat or down and the cost of living continues to rise other than gas which isn’t too…