Consumer Bankruptcy

This panel will discuss the growing practice of the pre-petition transfer of business assets to insiders to allow for an individual filing, and the resulting issues for the debtor and its creditors. Is it fraud per se, or is it a creative way to get your individual client and their business assets into one case? Join us as we discuss this inspired, but precarious, practice.

Balloon payments, assets acquired post-petition, student loan classifications and discharged debts related to criminal activity: Can these issues be navigated without throwing a debtor’s plan upside down? Catch up on strategic tips and considerations that will help you get your debtor to the other side of a chapter 13.

Does an approved fee application shelter counsel from malpractice claims brought by the client? If it does, how do you advise your client about how the application and its approval affects a client’s future claim against you? Does asking for it to be paid pit you against your client and create an unavoidable conflict of interest? Get the tools to navigate these murky ethical considerations.

This panel will survey how districts around the region are addressing the implementation of the National Form Plan and/or the adoption of an Opt-Out Plan, and will discuss procedures for approving the opt-out plan, new rules, potential challenges and software issues.

This session discusses to whom a debtor surrenders his residence, and whether a surrender prohibits the debtor from opposing a state court foreclosure action. The recent case of In re Failia (11th Cir.) sheds light on these questions.

This panel will discuss issues inherent when a client files multiple bankruptcies, including dismissal, discharge, automatic stay, lien-stripping, chapter 20, married debtors, co-debtors and more.

This panel will present a lively discussion of key issues decided in business and consumer bankruptcy cases throughout the country over the past year.

Oyez, oyez, oyez, all attendees are admonished to draw near and give their undivided attention to this panel as it delivers the most recent and updated analyses on this term’s U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

This panel will review important exemption cases post Law v. Siegel as well as membership interests in bankruptcies, wage garnishment preference claims and case law developments post Husky.