As reported by Robin Miller of CBAR, a Florida Bankruptcy judge has helped to distinguish between a divorce support provision or a property settlement agreement. If the obligation was intended to be a support payment, then Appellant did not discharge the debt in bankruptcy. See 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(5). If instead the obligation was intended to be a property settlement, the debt was discharged in bankruptcy. Six factors, have been commonly used in this circuit to determine whether a debtor’s obligation arising from a marital dissolution constitutes support or a property settlement: (1) whether the obligation terminates upon death or remarriage; (2) whether the payment was used to balance the parties’ disparate incomes; (3) the number of payments; (4) whether there were minor children involved who required support; (5) the…

Yes. As reported by Robin Miller of CBAR, a Chapter 13 debtor was judicially estopped from prosecuting her employment discrimination claim where she obtained confirmation of her plan in her still-active bankruptcy case without disclosing either her prepetition Charge of Discrimination filed with the Florida Commission on Human Relations and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or her postpetition lawsuit against her former employer. Summersill v. Kelly, 2014 WL 1333206 (M.D. Fla., April 3, 2014) (case no. 5:12-cv-667) (District Judge William Terrell Hodges)

No.  The 6th Circuit has established an “omitted creditors rule” in the case In re Madaj, 149 F3d 467 (1998). Here is a summary of the Madaj opinion and holding: 1.       The confusion regarding the treatment of omitted creditors is due to a line of cases that perpetuates the erroneous view that once a case is closed, the debtor must have his case reopened in order to discharge a pre-petition debt not listed on the bankruptcy petition. 2.       In a Chapter 7 no-asset case, reopening the case merely to schedule an omitted debt is for all practical purposes a useless gesture. 3.       Amending the schedules is pointless because this debt is discharged and reopening the case and scheduling the debt cannot affect that fact. 4.      …

Here is a very insightful post by my good friend and “credit guru” Philip Tirone with www.720CreditScore.com: “Charge it” is a phrase children hear when shopping with parents. It seems so easy to give someone a piece of plastic and get whatever we want. But is that the lesson we really want to teach our children? Parents have learned the value of thriftiness during the past 18 months. Some parents also realize the importance of teaching their children about credit cards because it is never too early to give them a foundation in buying with credit. If children learn how to build credit by using credit cards wisely, they’re ahead of most people when it comes to credit. Teaching children how to protect their finances from misuse…

As reported by Natalie Kitroeff from Bloomberg Businessweek, student debt is growing faster for seniors than for any other age group, according to the latest data gathered by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Lingering student loan debt is part of a broader and, many elder-care lawyers say, devastating accumulation of debt among older Americans. While people aged 50 and older hold only 17 percent of all U.S. student debt, this group has nearly three times as much debt as it did in 2005, according to the New York Fed data. By comparison, student debt for people under 40 is about one and a half times as high it was then. The numbers don’t distinguish between older Americans who took out loans to finance…

The New York Times DealBook Blog reported that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued its first consumer advisory on virtual currencies, including Bitcoin, and said that it would begin accepting complaints about such issues or companies. The agency warns consumers to be aware of hackers and schemes, volatile exchange rates and a lack of government protection. “Virtual currencies may have potential benefits but consumers need to be cautious and they need to be asking the right questions,” Richard Cordray, the director of the bureau, said in a statement. “Virtual currencies are not backed by any government or central bank, and at this point, consumers are stepping into the Wild West when they engage in the market.” In the bulletin, the agency urges virtual currency users…

As reported by Robin Miller of CBAR: Although the debtor had failed to schedule her prepetition claims against her mortgage creditors in her prior Chapter 13 bankruptcy case, and her failure to list the causes of action among her assets was tantamount to a representation that she had no such claims, the debtor was not judicially estopped from prosecuting the claims following the dismissal of her bankruptcy case, as the court had made no ruling relating to that representation. The court did not confirm the debtor’s proposed plan, address its merits, or mention her assets. It simply dismissed her petition, stating principally that she “ha[d] created unreasonable delay … prejudicial to creditors … [,] ha[d] failed to appear at the confirmation hearing,” and “ha [d]…