I can't help myself, I have favorites.

You already know my least favorite videos, and I'll probably re-shoot them just because they're so awful; of course, I did 'em myself on my little Apple laptop, and I'm not a cinematography genius like Marius.

But my fave of the series we've done so far has got to be "Zombie Debt Collectors"

A pretty lady named Teresa Giudice, who appeared on a "Real Housewives" Television Show, filed an ordinary little consumer bankruptcy.

Hey, what could possibly go wrong? It was just an ordinary, simple, eezee-peezee consumer Chapter 7 case, after all. And she was, as I understand it, just a minor celebrity.

And I repeat, what could possibly go wrong with a simple Chapter 7 Bankruptcy?

Hilarity did not ensue. 

UPDATE: even the sales of property are an issue in the poor woman's case.

MORE UPDATES: Apparently, buying a lotta stuff right after a Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing seemed like a good idea to everyone involved. 


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So what do you use to value cars for purposes of listing them in your schedules?

Well, you probably ought to use excellent condition private party sale value from Kelly Blue Book, because the bankruptcy trustee will. At a very minimum, you need to be aware of the excellent private party sale value so you can explain why the vehicle doesn't meet the "excellent" criteria, and be prepared to have the vehicle inspected to determine for sure that it doesn't have any transmission. And explain where the transmission has gone.

On the other hand, some Arizona bankruptcy debtors, prior to filing, or after a bankruptcy filing, need to buy a car. In negotiating for that car, there is another tool they can use: the Edmund's True Market Value(tm).

Now, I don't get  a kickback or honorarium from Edmond's, but if I were going to buy a car, either prior to filing a bankruptcy, or after a bankruptcy once I'd let my expensive lease or expensive car payment go the way of the Dodo, I'd use Edmund's. For a new or a used car, before or after a bankruptcy.

Why?

Well, I know a smart couple. They went to a dealer to buy a car. They handed the salesguy the page with the Edmund's True Market Value(tm) on it, and they paid $8,000 dollars less for the same make and model as the nice folks who didn't use Edmond's.

True story. 

Knowledge is power, according to Francis Bacon.

Now, not all knowledge is actual day-to-day power. If you know Green Lantern's Charging Oath by heart, backwards, it will probably not give you great benefit on a day to day basis.

If you know how to make a souffle that will not fall, and is adequately fluffy, you can earn the love of your friend's tastebuds (but you probably already have that, what with the home-made ice cream and all).

But knowing what a car that you wish to purchase or sell is really worth seems a very useful chunk of knowledge, if you're going to be buying or selling cars!

p.s. obviously, if you're going to buy a vehicle prior to bankruptcy, you need to be sensitive to the exemption limits for vehicles in Arizona (assuming that you qualify for those exemptions) and to the issues relating to pre-bankruptcy planning. And you'll want to sell cars, if you do, for fair market value (not for a buck to your sister), and keep track of where you spent the dough, and understand the phrase, "pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered". And list any substantial transactions on your schedules, of course.

And recall that nothing whatsoever that you do or do not do prior to a bankruptcy is without risk.

I have read a lot recently about mortgage modification programs failing to work as well as expected.

There are a lot of excellent articles about the issue all over the Internet. Here's one, for instance.

But I wasn't very surprised.

Debtors have told me for months that trying to work their way through an attempted loan modification was an utter nightmare, because the mortgage company would lose their documentation three times, and they'd be told five different stories by seven different mortgage company employees, and first they'd be told they were a shoe-in for a modification, and then they'd be told they weren't. Over a period of a year, in many cases.

In one case, a potential debtor was told that a trustee's sale would be postponed, and it was not.

Troubling for the poor debtor. Required an inconvenient quick move, and a fair amount of swearing.

So it will be interesting to see if a workable mortgage modification program gets cobbled together, or not.

In the meantime, folks are leaving houses on which they are underwater like crazy.

Some keep making payments to stay in houses that they know they'll never own in any meaningful sense, because they'll never be able to pay off the inflated mortgage amounts.

But in some cases, just staying current on the first mortgage costs less than renting another house, and the second mortgage doesn't start a trustee's sale because it's entirely underwater.

Now, sometimes the second mortgage in that situation will simply sue on the note, but that normally just precipitates a bankruptcy filing, so it's a little silly of the second mortgage company.

There's a new television show called "Outsourced".

The plot involves a young man who has just completed a management course with a novelties company so that he can manage a phone room  full of telemarketers.

But then he discovers that all the employees here in the United States have been "rightsized".

To zero.

So he gets to go to India, where he manages a group of funny, charming Indian telemarketers in their efforts to sell fake poo and rubber vomit.

And hilarity ensues.

The peculiar thing is that they wasted money on writers, instead of spending it wisely on stars and special effects and explosions (the entire show was explosion-challenged; nothing went "ka-boom"!), so that the show flowed easily from start to finish, with clever scene changes, funny dialogue, and situations that we all remember from Salt-and-Pepper Cop shows, where some of the humor comes from the intersection of different cultures and attitudes.

And several movie and television stars will come out of the cast; the casting director found actors who were saturated with charisma, charm, and pathos.

You know that the writers are good when you're rooting for the achingly sweet telemarketer who was hired just so she could be fired to scare the other employees. I nearly stood up and cheered when she upsold fake poo to her telephonic customer!

Here's the problem for me: I like folks in India. I can't help liking the Indian Actors who populate this series. And I would give it an Emmy, or an Oscar, or whatever it is, because I laugh non-stop throughout the show.

But I can't forget the scene when our hero walked into the big office at the beginning of the show.

Into a huge, empty telephone room, full of empty desks and empty chairs.

Where there had been jobs for U.S. workers.

Until those jobs were "Outsourced".

And the U.S. employees of the company were "rightsized".

Because when I talk to somebody who has to file a bankruptcy in Arizona because their job or their entire industry has been shipped to India or China, I'm not laughing.

This is obvious, and one obvious example of it is that when wages went down, in dollars adjusted for inflation, that was good for some employers.

Those same employers are beneficiaries of high unemployment, which is running much, much higher than any official estimate.

But today's example of a silver lining for somebody is this: Blockbuster filed a Chapter 11. So Netflix stock hit an all-time high.

Now, my mom was a nurse, and my dad was a teacher at a junior high school. So the people I'd like to see doing well are people who are middle income, and those who help people in the middle income group, like doctors and lawyers and cpas and dentists.

Sadly, it looks to me as though it will be a long time until the folks in the middle class get a real raise; there may be an increase in the minimum wage, but that just increases unemployment. And there may be a wage increase as time moves forward; but it doesn't help if your wages go up 1% and inflation goes up 10%. You lost money on that transaction, right?

But I'll keep my fingers crossed, and hope that there will be a real increase in small business growth in the United States, because that actually creates jobs; and I would like to see a rise in job statistics, rather than bankruptcy statistics, around the United States.

Although folks have a tendency to wait to file personal consumer bankruptcy cases until after they have a new job.

When some copper mines in Arizona closed twenty-eight years ago, because the price of copper had gone down, I suggested to Chief U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Caldwell that we'd be seeing a lot of bankruptcy cases pretty soon.

He said I was wrong (that happened a lot) and instructed me that we'd be seeing bankruptcy cases, but not until the mines reopened.

And, as was often the case, he was absolutely right.

Took it forever! And this Chapter 11 Bankruptcy is a testimony to "Technology Giveth, and Technology Taketh Away!"



And here are a couple of paragraphs from the article in Bloomberg, with a link to the original article:

Blockbuster Files for Bankruptcy After Online Rivals Gain

Every now and then I'm struck by an idea so brilliant, and so original, that I'm speechless.

One of those ideas recently surfaced on another blog.

Here's the idea: if the bills used in the United States are redesigned, people will be happier and will spend more, and then this depression will melt away like the morning dew!

Now, I couldn't make this stuff up.

So if you want to take a look at the new designs, go on over to The Huffington Post, and ignore those mean comments after the article.

They're just jealous that they didn't think of it first!

A lot of my clients are high-end, super duper bankruptcy cases, like doctors, lawyers and CPAs. And a lot are ordinary Joes and Janes.

As I've mentioned in a prior post, mature adults seem to be an increasing segment of the bankruptcy filing population, because if they're trying to support one generation up, and two or three down, they don't have a lot of spare money. Really.

But a lot of my clients, regardless of their ages, have extra homes they bought during the real estate bubble expansion, because that seemed like a good idea at the time.

And because I have the  best bankruptcy clients in Arizona (not kidding), and they are one and all decent, caring people, they worry about their renters. Because they don't want to hurt anybody, if they can help it.

So they ask me, "What about the people renting my bad investment houses?"

And I tell them, "You don't have to worry about your renters. There's a statute specifically designed to provide relief to renters who get caught in the trustee's sale explosion."

I'll talk about it more in future posts; and my buddy, Peter Strojnik, litigates some matters of this sort.

But here's the statute, for your reading pleasure, and as always, if the law changes, or this isn't an accurate version of the statute, or a newer version of the statute exists, well, check multiple sources, and don't rely on this for anything at all, right?

There are tectonic plates that interact badly, causing earthquakes.

And these days different generations are interacting in ways that cause bankruptcy.

An older demographic is starting to file bankruptcy in increasing numbers, because the pressure of trying to do the right thing is causing tectonic shifts in the psyches of grownups.

For instance, a sixty-year old woman (let's call her Mabel)  who is caring for her eighty-five year old mother, and holding down a full time job, is going to be sleep deprived.

When the Mabel's daughter Susie shows up on the front porch after the divorce, with her daughter's two little kids in tow, Mabel is going to be sleep-deprived and depressed.

When mom falls and breaks something important, and becomes bedridden, Mabel gets to move from sleep-deprived and depressed to sleep-deprived, depressed and despairing.

Because Mabel sees that tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow will not get any better. She's already figured out that social security will not rescue her.

Now, depression causes confusion, and confusion causes bad decisions.

So when Mabel is faced with a shortage of income because her hours have been cut in half, she is going to make a decision that will probably be based on trying to reduce the number of folks screaming at her.

Mortgage companies don't scream very much. Credit card companies do nothing but scream, from Mabel's perspective. And threaten and harass and browbeat.

Hey, everybody needs a job, right?

Although calling and browbeating the Mabels of the world does get my vote for "World's Worst Job".

But collectors love their kids, too. And there are Mabels among collectors, as well, although they hate their jobs so much that the prescriptions barely help.

When I read the funnies as a kid on Sunday Morning, "Blondie" was married to Dagwood, who built huge sandwiches.

And huge sandwiches are pretty funny!

Unless you're Mabel. Because she's the filling in the sandwich, trying to hold the generations together, and that's not as easy or as much fun as it sounds.

The other big mistake that Mabel makes is waiting too long to file her bankruptcy.

Because one of her primary values, in the midst of depression, antidepressants, and sleeping pills (to try to get some sleep after bedpan duty with mom) is just to get people to shut up when they're screaming at her.

Since lawsuits, to poor exhausted Mabel, are just more pieces of paper, she ignores those. Until the garnishments hit.

And in one last effort to make the noise stop, and to try to get some rest, she pulls her retirement funds out and spends them to pay the credit card debt, and to try to pay off the judgments, so the humiliation of the garnishments stop.

I talked to Mabel (not her real name, not her real facts) a week or two ago.

The good news is that in six months she'll qualify under the means test to file a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy, and then she'll get some peace; and she'll feel like she's rich when she can buy food and medicine.

The part of it that makes me sad is that I have to force her to do more work before I can fix her problems.

She has to take a look at all those debts and lawyers and mortgage companies that she's been studiously ignoring for the last two or three years, and list all her stuff as well as all her creditors (without exception).

And it makes me sad that I have to bully her into filling out all that information, but it makes me happy that she'll get a bankruptcy discharge and get on with her life.

The guys who answer my phones are good guys, and pretty smart, and have been with me a long time.

They are not lawyers and have a phobia about giving legal advice, so they normally won't even provide legal information, although they've picked up a lot by osmosis over the years.

But a gentleman (not his real name) called in a few days ago and wanted to know something before he did the homework or came in to see me, because he'd "already spoken to three other lawyers", and he didn't like the answer he had gotten from them.

He quizzed my phone guy on this issue: will Mr. McDaniel let me not list a credit card to which I owe money on the date of filing, because I want to keep it, no matter what?

My guy stuttered a little and said, "I'm pretty sure that he insists that you list all your creditors on your petition..."

And at that point the gentleman on the other line yelled, "You lawyers are all alike!" And he hung up on poor Steve.

Now, after somebody slams a phone in your ear, you almost wish they were still on the phone, so you could tell them how much you appreciated their courtesy and professionalism.

But here's what we get to take away from this story: the top consumer bankruptcy lawyers in Arizona (who are presumably the other folks our benighted called questioned) consistently tell debtors to tell the truth.

And that's a good thing.

p.s. people are sometimes smart about bankruptcy, and sometimes dumb as stumps. If it had been absolutely necessary to keep a credit card, that could probably been done. I always advise against it, because no matter which way you approach it, there's no certainty that the card will continue to be "switched on" after the bankruptcy is filed. You can dramatically increase the odds, but still, doesn't usually make economic sense.

But that also doesn't matter much.

Because our little buddy on the phone asked a question and didn't wait around to get the answer.

And my first guess is that we wouldn't have gotten along very well anyway.

So this is a happy story!

Arizona is Number One again!

When I went to Emerson Elementary School on 7th Street and Palm Lane in Phoenix, we were taught that Arizona was tops for copper, cattle, and citrus. And that was good.

As a good friend of mine, Robin Dugas, has pointed out to me, Arizona is now tops in another area.

Arizona is now Number One in student loan defaults.

I'll be writing in the near future about possible changes in the statutes concerning student loans and discharges in bankruptcy, but for right now, the Rule of Two still applies. You count the potential debtor's arms and legs and head, and if the total is two or less, they might be able to get out from under a student loan in Bankruptcy Court.

Now, it's not quite that bad, but it's pretty darn bad; the standard for "hardship" in the caselaw is absurdly high, and that's a bad thing.

The reason it's a bad thing is that a student loan is a double-trouble kind of hit.

On the one hand, if a student just out of school can't get a job (okay, that's far-fetched, but it could happen, right?) and has a hundred grand in student loans, that student may go into default, and get garnished for the rest of eternity through no particular fault of his own.

If the student decides to get a real job; staying an economic pet of parents or a girlfriend or boyfriend is another alternative that crops up from time to time, and that is bad for the economy because the now-degreed student should have an opportunity to become a productive member of society.

Instead, they're cast into the economic outer darkness with a debt they can't dump under almost any circumstances, and that's a bad thing.

Another alternative is that the student-loan debtor gets a job, but at much less salary than expected, and can't make payments on that student loan, and goes into default, and now penalty interest and legal fees and garnishments start, and the student doesn't get a chance to generate a decent credit history, Until the World Shall End.

That's also a bad result.

Congress is looking at changing some of the rules concerning the discharge of private student loans, but for most students, that will provide no relief.

I yearn for the Good Old Days (formerly known as "These Trying Times") when we could discharge student loans in ordinary bankruptcy cases.

But I'll keep you posted.

p.s. in some cases, a bankruptcy is the only way a student loan will ever get paid off; the debtor takes a huge pay cut, and can only pay some of her debts. So who you gonna pay? Well, probably not your credit card debts, if you have student loans.

In those cases, a bankruptcy filed in the District of Arizona may have some benefit for the debtor, because the non-student loan gets scraped off, and that frees up enough dough so that even on a lower salary, the student can stay current on the student loan.

And God help the poor student who goes into default on student loans, because nobody else will.

And that's a very bad thing.

Let's talk about reaffirmations for a little while.

Only a little while, though. They make me sad.

See, a reaffirmation is a bankruptcy specific agreement, inside your bankruptcy, that you will repay a debt according to its terms, and re-establishing your personal liability on that debt.

Just so you know, the entire reason you filed your bankruptcy is because you were looking for your bankruptcy discharge here in Arizona, to get rid of your personal liability!

Do you begin to see why I have a problem with reaffirmations? We're doing everything we can to make your personal liability go away in your bankruptcy, and here we are reversing course and making you personally liable again!

Makes no sense, right?

Well, here's a short video about reaffirmations in Arizona:



Turns out that in some very specific situations, after serious discussion, it might make sense for a debtor to sign a reaffirmation agreement. On a car, for instance.

Almost never makes sense with an unsecured debt, of course, unless its in settlement of a Complaint to Determine Discharge.

But I'll discuss that in a forthcoming educational video about bankruptcy law and procedure in Arizona; for now, understand that I don't like 'em, and after you get to know reaffirmations, you won't like 'em much either.

My big preference for any consumer debtor case (business bankruptcy cases are different, of course) is to keep all the exempt stuff, as well as the worthless and overencumbered stuff, and dump all the dischargeable debt.

Most debt gets scraped off in a consumer bankruptcy case in Arizona, of course; and some won't get scraped off, as frequent readers know.

After all, if you don't list a debt in a timely fashion, you probably won't scrape off that debt. So list all your debts! And some debts won't get scraped off anyway, like most tax debts, and most alimony and child support, and most student loans (although there is some pending legislation that could change a little of that).

So maybe you'll wind up signing a reaffirmation agreement agreement in some cases. But not often!

In the good old days, prior to the 2005 Amendments, we could routinely use a simple ride-through instead of a reaffirmation.

Now?

That would be too easy!


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Every now and then I'll see some bankruptcy lawyer in Cleveland or Denver offering a money-back guarantee about something that is pretty straightforward; for instance, you'll see a guarantee that if the case is dismissed for failure to pass the means test after the debtor has provided accurate information to the bankruptcy lawyer, there will be a refund of the fee.

Now, that's a pretty safe bet, because if a debtor tells me the numbers, and they go through the sophisticated software in my office, there's a pretty darn good chance that the Chapter 7 cases I file will pass the means test.

Because to a large extent, that's a matter of number crunching, although there is more to it than just that. And I ain't gonna file a case if it won't pass the means test. Just won't. I know what comes next.

Or a lawyer might guarantee that somebody will show up to represent you at your first meeting of creditors.

Well, duhhhhh.

Or a lawyer will guarantee that if you have been straight with him in filling out forms, and you don't get a discharge, you'll get your money back.

See, I have my own guarantee, and I make it boldly, and without fear, for anybody to hear!

I guarantee that I will file your case on a day ending in "Y". If you pass the Means Test, of course, and otherwise, not.

There, I said it! And I'm not afraid to say it!

I'll also guarantee, if pressed, that the sky is blue and the grass is green, but only under duress.

Because if a lawyer offers a guarantee, there are only two possible reasons that he's doing it: one is that he wants more business, and he wants to make the process seem less risky (hey, would I guarantee a result if I were worried about the outcome?), OR the lawyer is simply limiting the scope of the guarantee to items so unlikely to occur that it's a sucker bet to bet against him.

I, personally, just don't like guarantees. I think they set up an adverse relationship between the lawyer and the client. And frankly, a money back guarantee doesn't begin to cover the issues if something goes seriously wrong in a bankruptcy case in Arizona.

What could go wrong?

Well, the debtor could fail, by "mistake", or by way of "forgetfulness", that he owns property in Mexico. Now, could that happen?

Yeah. Like on Wednesday, you know?

So what to do to minimize the issue? Well, the bankruptcy lawyer amends quick like a bunny, and holds his breath until he turns blue, hoping that the silly debtor doesn't get himself squashed like a bug.

Or a debtor decides not to list a creditor.

Or an attorney for a trustee objects to an exemption that is clearly legit, but the client can't handle any risk whatsoever that the trustee could prevail (note: it's better to be lucky than smart). 

Or a debtor decides not to schedule that he sold his Corvette to his sister for a dollar the day prior to the bankruptcy filing.

Or a debtor has previously lied like doggie to get a line of credit and he gets caught by the bank prior to the entry of the discharge.

Or the debtor, against written instructions from counsel, racks up massive credit card debt, inside the 90 day period, or on the 91st day (that looks real good, right?).

The list goes on and on.

For about thirty years, so far, in my experience.

So what do you do, as a lawyer, with guarantees?

Well, I just won't make 'em. I've seen too much, and there are too many ways for something to go sideways in Bankruptcy Court after the 2005 Amendments.

And if something goes sideways, what does a good Arizona bankruptcy attorney do?

Well, he does whatever he can to minimize the bleeding.

You know?

p.s. one thing that can go sideways in a Chapter 7 case, for instance, is that a creditor can file a Complaint to Determine Dischargeability of Debt. That requires additional work, and it's litigation.

Or, as I cheerfully tell my clients, if I gotta jump in front of a bus for you, that'll cost extra.

p.p.s. When I wanted to get my eyes sliced and diced with a laser to correct my nearsightedness, I knew darn well I wasn't going to get a guarantee out of a board-certified eye surgeon. So I did research into credentials and experience and training and testimonials like a crazed weasel.

When you decide that you're going to file a bankruptcy, you might want to research credentials and experience and training and testimonials in the same way.

But only if your discharge is important to you.

You know?

Or you can get a guarantee. Your choice.


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It always surprises me when clients tell me that they were afraid to come in and talk to a bankruptcy attorney in Arizona, especially one who is board-certified as a bankruptcy specialist.

I'm used to one kind of fear; a lot of folks know that their finances are out of control, because they can't pay their bills! Or because they're being sued. Or there's a trustee's sale pending on their house. And even though they know they're in trouble, they don't want to look at the wound.

Kinda like, if I don't make any noise, or even look at it, the monster will go away!

Of course, that doesn't happen, and that approach leads to bad outcomes.

But there is a different kind of fear of bankruptcy lawyers in AZ that surprised me.

Potential bankruptcy debtors are afraid that the bankruptcy lawyer will judge them harshly for running up so much debt on their credit cards, or consider them stupid for investing in real estate, or getting a quarter of a million in student loans with a degree that guaranteed they wouldn't get a job even in good times!

Now, that's like worrying that the cancer specialist is going to judge you harshly because you have a big lump. Or the medical doctor will judge you harshly because you have an ugly wart. Or an especially complex forearm fracture.

I've been doing this a long time now, about thirty years. And I've been Chairman of Everything Bankruptcy, more or less. And therefore I know a lot of bankruptcy lawyers.  I know smart bankruptcy lawyers; I know board-certified bankruptcy lawyers. I know business and consumer bankruptcy specialists, and guys who do mostly Chapter 7s and mostly Chapter 13s and mostly Chapter 11s. I know bankruptcy lawyers who go to church, and bankruptcy lawyers who drink a lot and chase girls (or boys). I know smart bankruptcy lawyers and dumb bankruptcy lawyers.

But, except for bankruptcy creditor lawyers, I don't know a single judgmental bankruptcy lawyer.

Because that would sort of defeat the purpose, right?

Although, frankly, I'm not sure I'd be comfortable going to see a bankruptcy lawyer who handled both debtor cases and creditor cases.

But that's just me. Maybe that would give 'em more perspective, you know?

But people file bankruptcy for all kinds of reasons.

I mean, really.

Some lost a job. Some lost a spouse to death. Some enjoyed a seven-year long divorce. Some had an entire industry disappear on them ( a contractor recently said to me, it's as though you were a dentist, and you woke up one morning and nobody in the country had any teeth!).

And there are unusual reasons that people file; a crazy judgment for a trillion dollars is entered against them (nobody wants their day in court after they have their first day in court, by the way). Or the debtor is bipolar (I'm seeing a bit more of that lately) and charged two million dollars during a manic phase.

Or the debtor is in a depressive phase and doesn't respond to a complaint that had a perfectly good defense, and now is stuck with final judgment that can't be appealed (you can try to set aside the judgment, but you'd better go swim in Lourdes first; and drink a few gallons of the water, as well. And it might be good if you also eat the entire Blarney Stone).

Or the potential debtor might have a gambling addiction, and they might have dumped their life savings in Vegas, and those life savings will stay in Vegas, you know?

Now, I don't particularly care how a debtor got that way, any more than a board-certified oncologist cares about how the tumor got that big. Or a board-certified cardiovascular surgeon cares about how you got that much plaque in your arteries. 

The concern is always how to fix the problem, and how to get the best practicable outcome for the client. 

The best possible outcome is often out of reach, because the client has waited too long to come visit a bankruptcy specialist, and steps have to be taken sooner than the bankruptcy attorney would like. 

Or worse, the client has taken steps which will of necessity delay filing,  like pulling too much money out of a 401(k) (which will count as income under the means test, and may require waiting to file until that month of "income" falls off the rolling six-month lookback period), or a preference payment to mom, which could delay filing by a year if the amount is substantial. 

These days, post-2005 Amendments to the Bankruptcy Code, it is not unusual for a client to hire a bankruptcy lawyer and have to wait seven months to file a Chapter 7. 

On the other hand, that's a lot less pain, overall, than the poor client would have to suffer in a five-year Chapter 13.

Sometimes you gotta be cruel to be kind. 

Or something. 

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Frequent readers will recall that I am not the lowest-cost provider of bankruptcy services in Arizona, by choice. There are all sorts of beginners who guarantee the lowest prices on a bankruptcy case, Chapter 7 or Chapter 13, in Arizona, for folks who care only about price; and there are a number of bankruptcy "mills" that operate a little like fast-food joints, and you'll know 'em when you show up there and get the hard sell to file a Chapter 13 and sign the retainer agreement now (although they seem to charge more than beginners, and provide less in benefits!).

Now, even barbers have to start in Barber's College, and they get practice, you know? I just never wanted people to practice on me after I could afford an actual barber!And dental school interns always made me just a little too anxious, but I'm a risk-averse sissypants anyway.

So I normally won't refer a case to anybody except a board-certified, AV Rated, AVVO 10.0 bankruptcy attorney, if I'm the wrong tool for the particular job at hand. Just because.

On the other hand, sometimes I talk to somebody who has a pity pitch that makes me cry. I try not to break down in the office, because that's kinda like hearing the surgeon say "Ooops!" when you're coming out of twilight sleep.

But there are folks who, if it weren't for bad luck, would have no luck at all.

I met a lovely young mother recently who works a hard, low-paying job so she can rush home to take care of her poor mother, who broke half the bones in her body in a fall, and who has a young child with health issues. And mom, while beautiful, has her own share of health thingies going on.

She's a hero. I didn't resent it hardly any when she used up some of the Kleenex in my office.

But I wasn't about to take her money. Sorry, I have to look at myself in the mirror when I shave.

She has noooooooo assets.

She has tiny debt, in the ten thousand dollar range. 

She has tiny income.

So I talked to her for a half hour and printed out the Bankruptcy Court Self-Help information for her.

Would I send all my clients there?

Get real, Lucille! Many of my clients have big incomes, or big debts, or big issues. And any one of those requires, in my humble opinion, a real live Arizona bankruptcy lawyer. Board certified, AV rated, AVVO 10, and maybe they have a chance of a good result.

Although nothing in Bankruptcy Court is guaranteed. 

But if somebody is far below the means test (like nearly zero income), and has teensy little debts, and has no assets at all except the clothes on their backs, and no complications (like preferences or fraudulent transfers), I don't want to take their butter and egg money for the next three months to file for them.

Mind you, I'm not St. Francis of Assisi.

When somebody comes in who has a few million in debt, or even fifty thousand, and has issues, and is currently paying credit card companies five thousand a month, I'll certainly charge that individual a fair fee, and work hard to get a good result.

But some folks are so down it looks like up to them, and in a very few carefully selected cases I will refer to the Self-Help Center at the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Arizona.

And I know that any attorneys who assist her there will be the cheapest lawyers in Arizona, guaranteed, because they're volunteers! 

It's not a perfect solution, but in insolvency situations, there are few perfect solutions.

And I know it's obvious, but I'll say it anyway: it ain't because I don't like 'em. 


.

It used to be, in the good old days, formerly known as these trying times, that the automatic stay at 11 USC 362 would hold off a secured creditor forever. Well, a long time, anyway. Creditors then were less certain of their remedies, and Judges were less certain of the law, and debtor's attorneys were frisky.

The automatic stay is a fundamental protection for both the consumer debtor and the business debtor. But one of the primary purposes of the automatic stay is to protect the bankruptcy estate itself from the depredations of the "race of diligence" that occurs prior to a bankruptcy filing.

Remember, outside of bankruptcy, the general rule among creditors of the same class is that "he who strikes furstest gets the mostest." An unsecured creditor who obtains a judgment and garnishes obtains a continuing garnishment and additional rights, including the right to hold a debtor's exam of the judgment debtor, and ask him (or her, or them) where they have what. And that examination is held, as many are, under penalty of perjury, and is recorded, and is no fun for the debtor.

The filing of a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy in Arizona changes the playing field from a "furstest gets the mostest" to an "After you, my dear Alphonse!" sort of environment.

Most creditors, after a bankruptcy filing, know that efforts in other Courts are of no particular benefit to them. Some creditor lawyers are new kids who don't realize that the automatic stay is effective as to their efforts even if they haven't received a copy of the stay, and that their efforts in another court, like Superior Court, or Justice Court, are void ab initio.

That is, they should have stayed home reading the funnies and drinking coffee and blogging instead of trying to move forward in a lawsuit against a debtor after a bankruptcy is filed.

Silly creditor! 

So for most creditors, it's a silly exercise to keep on keeping on, after a Chapter 7, Chapter 13, Chapter 11 or Chapter 12 bankruptcy gets filed in Arizona.

But while unsecured creditors (credit card creditors, medical bill creditors, and personal loan creditors are usually in this category) generally get depressed and go to sleep after a filing, and might file a proof of claim in the case so if there's a distribution they might get paid a few pennies on the dollar, other sorts of creditors may move faster.

Secured creditors (car liens, home mortgages, and engagement ring purchases over time) will often swing into action immediately after the filing of a bankruptcy by filing a request with the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Arizona to lift the stay and permit them to take any and all actions appropriate to their collateral.

Let's look at a stay lift on a mortgage. The collateral is the house. A completely upside down second mortgage holder is generally not going to bother with filing a motion to lift the stay, because the second mortgage holder may very well be effectively unsecured, and if they are, and know it, they just sit and experience depression. They may file a proof of claim.

But a first mortgage holder on a house will normally file a lift stay motion because a trustee's sale will either get 'em some dirt, or some money. And getting paid sooner is better than getting paid later, you know?

Yeah, I know you know.

So a first position secured creditor on a house that has some decent value will be something a creditor will want to grab as soon as possible.

A first position creditor on a house who files to lift the stay will generally file the motion to lift the stay sooner rather than later. Lately it seems to me that stay lift actions get filed within thirty days of filing, although banks are so overwhelmed with defaults these days that sometimes that won't happen.

Don't count on it, though!

Once a stay lift action is started, the debtor and the trustee in a Chapter 7 case have thirty days to respond.

And normally they don't.

The reason is simple.

There are two defenses to a stay lift action in Arizona (and elsewhere) that concerns a residential house and a first mortgage.

One is that the house is necessary to an effective reorganization.

Nobody in their right mind argues that in a consumer Chapter 7 Bankruptcy in Arizona, because there is no reorganization in progress in a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy in Arizona! It's a liquidation!

And the other defense to the stay lift doesn't get used much since the housing bubble burst. The other possible defense is that there is equity in the house for the estate!

Not for the debtor. For the estate.

And in Arizona that would normally mean that there is more than $150,000 equity in the house, so that the estate will benefit if the stay is kept in place and the house is sold by the trustee.

Now, that happens from time to time in Arizona, and in such bankruptcy cases, the Chapter 7 Trustee sells the house, and then gives the debtor a check for $150,000.

But in your case with your house?

Don't hold your breath.


.

This is a post from a new blog I've started. It has one purpose in mind: it's designed to help folks who have small businesses bring in more customers with zero increase in their non-existent advertising budget. And the idea is that if they just need a few more customers, and this gets it for them, they won't have to file a bankruptcy!

And if they have to file anyway, well, these techniques will help them start their next business!

The information in it took me forever to learn, and I know that these approaches to marketing work well, although, of course, I don't guarantee that the sky is blue or the grass is green.



Enjoy!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So here's my evil plan.

I'm going to talk to a bunch of my friends, who are either handymen, or restaurant owners, or chiropractors, or computer repairmen, or investment advisers.

And they all have one thing in common.

They are all invisible.

Not in person. They're fairly opaque, in person. Most of 'em. But on the Internet, they are simply invisible, because they have no presence at all.

Now, I've been reasonably successful in developing an Internet presence, and I've gotten great information from folks like Jay Fleischman, Stephen Fairley, and my Findlaw Rep, Alex Morris.

But I need something simple, that will let a little tiny business with zero advertising budget develop an Internet presence, because if my buddies don't market on the Internet, they will work for somebody who does.

So right here and right now, I'm going to list some sites on the Internet that are great free marketing resources, like Blogger and Word Press, along with their little tutorials.

And I'm going to list some sites that a small business simply must use (even if they use the sites poorly), in order to put a big sign on the Internet that says, "We Make Really Good Lemonade Here!"

And I also suggest that you check Jay Fleischman's site, Stephen Fairley's site, and the great blog maintained by Alex Morris. Just because they primarily help lawyers is no reason you shouldn't buy their DVDs, seminars, e-books and other resources.

So here we go in a whirlwind tour of sites that will get business to your small business (unless it doesn't; bear in mind that these sites will only help buyers find you; if the food in your restaurant is lousy, or the service is bad, that won't help. Ditto if you sell buggy whips and most people drive cars, right?).

1) Google Places. I'm cheating a little here because I'm taking you to the Google discussion of Google Places. But if you do nothing else, plug your business information into Google Places, and you won't be entirely transparent on the Internet. You'll need a free Google email account to plug your info into Google Places. But no money! And you may discover the day after you plug in your information that your business doubles.

No guarantee, of course, about any of this stuff; and none of it is legal advice, of course. 

--Note: my discussion today is going to be Google-centric; it is the 800 pound gorilla in Internet Marketing; and if Google ain't happy with you, you ain't gonna be happy. But if Google loves you, you will experience joy in business.

And here is a way to Build a FREE Website, and a Blog. Because a Blog is just a website that you control, rather than a website designer, and you get to build content in your free site! There are two most-used hosting sites for your FREE Blog, and one is

2)Word Press;
3)and here is the Word Press What It Is, and How to Do It Page, to make it really easy for you!

--Blogger, which I used to build this list.
4)and here's the how to do things on Blogger VIDEO SERIES, to make it even easier!
--here's how to add something you don't know exists to something you don't have yet: a discussion of
5) Gadgets that you can add to your Blogger Blog.

Note: Yes, I am telling you to start a Blog. Start today. Build a crummy starter blog, just to get started, and don't worry. Because nobody is going to find your miserable starter blog until you start making your blog visible. Do remember, however, that whatever you put on your blog will never vanish entirely, so do not post crazy, dirty, profane, or other weirdo stuff, unless you're willing to have that identified with you when you run for office or apply for a new job. Seriously.

Now, not only is your small business currently invisible, but your brand-new blog is also pretty invisible because it's new, so it will probably be listed at the tail end of the website lists, which puts it about 26 billion down, or so. Over time, with work, it will drift up in the Blogosphere, and you will have clients who visit you because they like what you put on your blog!

Why will your blog be visible over time? Well, because you will submit it to blog directories, where it will be published, and you will gain a viewership just because they like your stuff.

Wait until you have a buncha entries in your blog to submit it to directories, because some are a little snooty and want your blog to have some, you know, quality information. 

A list of popular blog directories includes:
6)Blog Catalog;
7)Technorati;
8)Bloghub;
9)BlogHints

My personal prejudice is that you ought to submit to as many blog directories as seems like a good idea, or until you get tired; don't pay anybody anything to be placed in a directory, at least at first, because the whole point of this exercise is to develop a HUGE web presence for you or your little business with a TINY expenditure of money.

Although, as with most things, you can trade money for time, if you choose to do so.

Here I'm going to let you in on the secret of Internet Presence: Google Loves Content! And here's a 10)nice article that talks about developing the content that Google loves!

That means that if you post more stuff which is interesting, useful, entertaining, or otherwise attractive to viewers, Google will love you, and you will be happy, because Google rewards those it loves.


What is Content?
 
Well, original text is content. Videos are content. Pictures are content. Music is content. The spoken word, recorded, is content.

It's all content!

And you can put all of those sorts of things into your blog. And you should. In fact, you must.

And then Google will love you and reward you by putting you on Page One of Google for your relevant search terms, which is functionally similar to building a better mousetrap: customers will find you, no matter where you try to hide.

SO HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE TO BUILD A GREAT BLOG?

A while. So you'll need something to let customers find your restaurant or your clinic or you until your blog drifts to the top of the search engine for the search term "best blackened snapper in Toledo".

AN INTERNET MARKETING DEVICE THAT'S INSTANT-ON! 

So what to do until your blog drifts to the top of the hit parade?

You need something that will direct traffic to your tiny business fast and effectively, and also build links to your blog and your website (hey, you can build a second blog to function as your website. A blog is just a website that you control and design. In fact, every single blog entry is a part of your blog, AND A FREESTANDING, SEPARATE WEBSITE!!!!!).

Sorry, I got a little excited there. 

In the meantime, you'll want to put all the information about your little business into all the free online business directories that you can track down, and especially into all the free online specialized business directories that you can find.

DO NOT PUT MONEY INTO A DIRECTORY. PUT YOUR BUSINESS INFORMATION INTO THE DIRECTORY. YOU ARE NOT YET SMART ENOUGH TO DECIDE WHICH DIRECTORY YOU NEED TO FEED TO GET GREAT RESULTS, SO DON'T GUESS!

Note that in the past, I did guess about which directories to pay, and I guessed wrong. Which is why I'm trying to save you!

So how many free online directories do you stuff your information into?

Well, how rich do you want to be?

And how do you find the most useful free online business directories on the Internet?

Well, how about if you type this search term into Google?

11) Free Online Business Directory

What do you want to bet that the most beloved-by-Google free online business directories show up at the top, and show up, in order of love-magnitude, all over the next ten pages?

Now, you have a business, not a hypothetical business.

I know that your business is not the business of law, so I'll show you something just so you get the idea.

If you type in a search that looks like this:

12) Free Online Lawyer Directory

You will see a bunch of online lawyer directories. I know them all, and love them all, and use some of them.

Some, you see, are not exactly free. If you're a lawyer! They are generally free to clients.

So if you type in a search term like

13) Free Online Restaurant Directory

You may run into sites that are free as to eaters, but not free as to preparers. So just put your information into the sites that are free for you.

For now. Once you are rich, feel free to evaluate the cost-benefit analysis of whatever you want, but for now, stay with free, okay?

Now the process of submitting the information to online directory sites is somewhat mechanical, so you may want to route that to a subordinate employee, if you have one, or to your teenage kid, if you have one. You may want to do it yourself so you can see the kind of information texture that the directories permit.

14) Padding Before the Bullet Hits; make sure your best customers talk about you. See the example.

I have a buddy who is a great litigator, and I talked to him about his online presence, and he agreed with me that you can't keep everybody happy all the time, and that was inevitable that eventually, even he would have a client who didn't like him, and he wanted to have a lot of good reviews to dilute the bad reviews when they eventually showed up.

And that sounded like wisdom to me.

Another buddy of mine, who is a pretty fair lawyer, has two online reviews at the AVVO site, and they are both bad reviews. The writers just didn't like that lawyer. Neither hired him, but they both trashed him.

And he had no padding.

That is probably a good lesson.

So where else can you market yourself or your business online?

Well, a leading free site which permits you to list your professional qualifications and to interact with other professionals of various sorts is called 

15) Linkedin 

and the smartest user of Linked-in is a genius of a doctor named

16) Dr. Joel Brill

and you can see that his referral network is roughly the size of the Planet Jupiter.  Just see what he did to build his network, and how he structured his profile, and you'll know everything you need to know about Linkedin.

Now, there's another place you can build a free website, and it's not a place I think of in connection with marketing professional services or restaurants or factories. But in that context, I am clearly wrong. It is entirely possible to build a complete, free-standing website using the tools in a contender for most-used site on Planet Earth, and that site is called

17) Facebook

Now, Facebook always seemed a little frivolous to me, because I associate it with games like Vampire Wars and Mafia Wars and free online Poker. Not that I've ever played those silly games. But Facebook is catching up to Google in uses per day, and by some metrics, it has passed Google. One of my buddies at Findlaw earned my undying love by building me a little Facebook Page that was a functional equivalent of my professional website:

18) Me on Facebook, Professional Page.

As you can see, it has everything but my videos, which I'll plug in soon.

And that brings us to

19) YouTube.com, which is a very frequently visited site, and you should have videos here. 

As you can see, I finally took my own advice and recorded some educational videos about bankruptcy in Arizona, and the collection of those videos is really a new website for me, and will be for you:

20) Me on YouTube, talking forever.

But there are a substantial number of free video hosting sites on the Internet, and right now it seems to me that it would be a good idea for you to do what I have not yet done, and start to put your videos onto

21) Metacafe, and

22) Yahoo Video, and about twenty more video hosting sites!

But wait! There's more! There is, for instance,

21) Twitter.com 

So am I also on Twitter? Well, yes.

22) Me on Twitter, Tweeting. 

Now, if you are a tiny business, or if your tiny business filed a bankruptcy and you have to start a new one, you will have the opportunity to announce to the world that there is a grand opening of a new business, or that you have hired a French Chef, or that you business has been awarded an additional star by somebody.

In the old days, you would send a press release to a local newspaper.

But that's ever so yesterday.

So at the point that you want to do a press release, you will probably want to find an online location to publish your press release. Or you may want to find twenty of 'em.

I like to see which sites are on Page One of Google, because I suspect that they may do as good a job of publicizing my announcements as they do in getting highly ranked by Google. At least, that's my theory for today. Here's a highly rated (by Google) press release service, and it's My Favorite Price!

23) Here's one Free Site to distribute your press release online! There are also fifty more. Or more.

Let's recap.

If you are invisible on the Internet, you can do everything right, and you will still have to file a bankruptcy because attrition and the depression will whittle away your old customer base, and new customers won't find you, because you are invisible on the Internet!

So don't be Casper!

Be....somebody opaque. I'll think of somebody.

But whoever you are, be beloved by Google!

p.s. at some point, if you ask me nicely, I'll tell you the secret of...

24) Amazon!

You know, since I've been doing this for thirty years, you'd think I'd seen it all.

But you would be wrong.

Today, for instance, I got to talk to a pretty, smart young woman with a nice husband and a bundle of children.

And she explained that I wasn't her first rodeo. She had previously visited with a big law firm and they had told her that she had no choice whatsoever; she had to file a Chapter 13 Bankruptcy case, not a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy case.

Why would that surprise me?

BECAUSE SHE WAS A PERFECTLY GOOD CANDIDATE FOR A CHAPTER 7!!!!!!

THE LAW FIRM HAD LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDDDDD TO HER!!!!!!!!!

BECAUSE THE PRESUMPTIVELY REASONABLE FEE FOR A CHAPTER 13 IS LARGER THAN THAT FOR A CHAPTER 7!!!!!!

Now, I'm just an old-fashioned small-town bankruptcy lawyer, but I expect vultures to have good table manners, at least.

Obviously, I expect too much.

But wait, there's more!

Not only did they want four thousand dollars for a Chapter 13 in a case with small debt, they also wanted to charge her to scrape off a second mortgage that was totally underwater on her house.

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE! They also signed her up for a "mortgage modification program" that she could clearly have done for herself.

And the total tariff for these projects in a small, simple case that cried out for a Chapter 7 filing?

A shade under ten thousand dollars.

Now, sometimes I think another lawyer has forgotten something. It happens.

And sometimes I think another lawyer could have taken a different approach. Opinions differ.

But this looked to me like another high-pressure sales job on a defenseless debtor with a houseful of kids and earnings that were not astronomical.

Call me irresponsible, but that seems to be a little high and hard and to the inside for a fair strike, you know?

Now, I have previously suggested that it would be a good idea if folks used the Nolo Free Online Means Test Calculator as a first cut at the ball to determine whether they would qualify for a Chapter 7 or a Chapter 13.

But THAT'S ONLY THE FIRST CUT AT THE BALL. That just tells a debtor that if he files TODAY, he doesn't qualify for a Chapter 7.

It doesn't address what can be done with a certain amount of thought and focus.

But in a post, soon, I'll discuss how to tell whether you qualify for a Chapter 7 without too much work, so if you're told you MUST file a Chapter 13, and you DO qualify for a Chapter 7, you'll know that the guy on the other side of the desk may not have your best interests at heart.

Sure irritates the heck out of me, though. That's the kind of thing that gives lawyers a bad name.

Growl.

p.s. The reason a scheme like the above can work, and even make the mark grateful to the schemer, is that the initial retainer amount is modest; but the rest of the dough is getting paid out through a plan, so the poor debtor is trapped and can't escape the legal fees. Ingenious trick, no?

.

My big business clients don't need my marketing help. They have a big budget for marketing and a IT Department and consultants. Actually, CONSULTANTS!

My small business clients are a different story. A small business does really, really well during good times because it subscribes to the theory that if "you keep it small, you keep it all!"

But that also means they don't have expensive help to assist them in marketing.

Now, the unfair distinction between little companies and big companies with huge resources made me sad.

And when I get sad, I blog!

Of course, if you read this thing, you'll notice that I also blog when I'm happy. Or cranky. Or asleep.

So I built a new blog with a clumsy title that I'm sure I'll change, and recently I posted the secrets of marketing a small business online.

Now, the ideas in there are worth a lot, if you use 'em. If you don't, well, they're very interesting topics of conversation around the table at Kentucky Fried.

But if you're one of my small business clients, and you want to start a new business after your bankruptcy, you don't have to take me to lunch anymore! You're welcome to do that, of course, because I always like it when my clients do well after a filing.

But you can go directly to my little marketing for small business blog and read the pearls of marketing wisdom that I've picked up from smart people!

And since it's new, I'm particularly happy with this particular discussion of how to market your small business for My Favorite Price, which is Free!

I spent yesterday making new educational bankruptcy videos.

Tomorrow I'm going to talk to some non-lawyer buddies about how to establish a presence on the Internet so that they won't ever need to file a bankruptcy (the Good Lord Willing and the Creek Don't Rise).

So today, here's a link to the bundle of bankruptcy videos I've posted on YouTube so far.

You should be able to see the progression from horrible to better, and then to almost okay.

They are coming along, slowly. And more will be loaded shortly.

And here's your statistic of the day: one American is filing a bankruptcy every fifteen seconds.   I read it on Twitter!

Current clients and future clients, you don't need to read this, because I'm just talking about something that makes me hyperventilate if I don't talk about it.

So, how's that unemployment these days? Well, the official numbers simmer around 10%. But I keep a pretty good finger on a series of pulses, and my unofficial number is closer to 20%.

And just yesterday I got to talk to a nice guy who used the word "despair" in the same sentence with "depression" about his recent failures to find a job.

And then I ran into an article in the ABA Journal about the fact that equity partners in large firms are going to be pushed off of the tops of buildings in ever-increasing numbers.

Here's a snippet from that article:

Not only are general counsel turning to Second Hundred firms, they are also sending work to offshore legal service providers and virtual law firms, the article says. “While some firms call the entry of low-cost service providers a threat to their market share,” the authors say, “we have also heard others describe these lower-cost alternatives as an opportunity to reduce their own cost structure by outsourcing some of their work to these providers.”

The thing I liked about that paragraph was the balance. On the one hand, some call it a threat, while others see it as an opportunity.

Well, for most folks, it's a threat! 


Simple enough? 


Now, outsourcing of jobs has been going on for a while, but it's not what I see as normal. For most of my life, U.S. Citizens did jobs here in the U.S., and we produced cars and televisions and washing machines for the rest of the world.

And that was good.

Now, for reasons that I'm too dumb to understand, businesses that sell their products in the United States create their products in other countries.

There is sort of an endpoint for the process: when U.S. Citizens are paid as little as workers in Sri Lanka, factories will come back to the United States.

Does anybody else see a problem with any of this?

Because I sure do!

Here's a quick fix for the economy: set up tariff walls so that if a car is produced in, say, Korea, it costs a heck of a lot more than a car produced in, for instance, Detroit!

Suddenly, setting up factories in India, China and Korea loses the competitive advantage it now has, because the low cost of labor there is offset by the tariff wall.

And just as suddenly, jobs reappear, as though by magic, here in the United States, and the depression is over. Done. Finished. Complete.

Of course, I could be wrong.

But I don't think so!

And by the way, our economy has enough folks that if our factories sell to our citizens, we all make plenty of dough.

And that seems like a good idea to me.

Even if it would reduce the avalanche of bankruptcy cases coming through my door.

No, I mean in the Paleolithic!

There are two questions for which the normal response is always a little surprising to me.

One is the question, "How much is your house worth?"

The other is the question, "What is your total yearly gross income?"

And the correct answer, apparently, is "Do you mean now?"

Normally, it's the hubbies who answer the question with a question when I ask 'em about their income.

And I can understand it, because a guy bases a lot of his feeling of self-worth on his ability to bring home the bacon. And if he's only bringing home one-half of a thin slice, he wants to make sure that everybody knows that previously, he was bringing home several hogs, two sows and a cute little piggie every two weeks.

Just not now.

Which I get.

Women answer the question with a question when I ask about the issue of house value, and I think that's because they're amazed and bemused that their five-hundred thousand dollar home of yesterday is now worth eighty-five thousand. Or whatever it is.

If it sounds like I'm making fun, I'm not.

There are some things that are less fun than you might think.

As it happens, people, according to surveys, are more likely to talk about their sex lives and exploits than about their incomes. And coming into an Arizona bankruptcy lawyer's office to dump all their economic baggage in front of a stranger cannot possibly be any fun.

Which I also get.

And I also know where that specific question comes from: it's the question you ask when you really don't want to answer or move forward, and you know you gotta, but you want to wait for the moment of truth for as long as you possibly can, without appearing to be stalling.

Kinda like when my yearly visit to the doc, when he puts on that darn rubber glove and pulls out the K-Y Jelly, and says "bend over".

And you know what I say?

Wait for it. 

"Do you mean now?"

Okay, here we go: 42% of folks think you can't get a job.

42% think you can.

And 16% don't know.

So what do you think?

I actually know the answer, because I'm a bankruptcy lawyer in Arizona, and I keep track of some of my clients, when I'm not pulling new ones out of the undertow. It works like this: you get a job if you're in the right place at the right time.

On the other hand, half of the entrepreneurs in the United States right now are working twelve hour shifts (half-days) and taking as little money as they can eke by on, to make sure they can keep their businesses alive.

Which means that the little businesses aren't functioning as little businesses; they are simply there to provide the owners with a, you know, job!

Here's part of the article about people's job expectations and beliefs:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 42% believe it's still possible to find work in America, but that's down 10 points from 52% the month President Obama took office. Forty-two percent (42%) say it's no longer possible for those who want to work to find employment. Another 16% aren't sure. 


Here's the rest of the article. Enjoy!

And here's a bonus: the bankruptcy video of the day: I suggest avoiding fraudulent transfers, because they're fattening. And remember, a fraudulent transfer doesn't need an actual fraudulent intent!

This is pretty ugly.

Like the dot.com bubble wasn't ugly?

Like the housing bubble wasn't ugly?

Looks like higher education is the next bubble.

And I've blogged about this impending disaster recently, and I'll link back to it, and you know when I'll do that if you're a frequent reader.

But here's a link to a short, insightful article about a bubble that will make a lotta people sad.

And one thing in the article made me especially sad, although I already knew it: a lot of students start college, and accumulate huge bankruptcy-nondischargeable educational debt.

And a lot of those same students never graduate, too.

Makes for a double-whammy, you know?

Like holding and hitting.

In Alaska and nearby areas, snow is a major part of the environment.

Because subtle gradations of snow are critical to survival if you live your life in a kayak and an igloo, some cultures have developed a lot of different names for snow, while English has very few.

In the Land of Bankruptcy, there are many kinds of debt, and the subtle distinctions between them are critical to your survival in Bankruptcy Court.

So I've built a little video that talks about some of the different kinds of debt that are important in a bankruptcy case.

Enjoy!

What happens at a First Meeting of Creditors in a consumer Chapter 7 Bankruptcy?

Well, that depends. Did you file your bankruptcy after you did your consumer credit counseling?

Did you pass the means test?

Did you read The Trustee Letter that you received a couple of days after your bankruptcy case was filed?

Did you give the Trustee the copies of documents he or she requested, including three years of tax returns?

And did you show up at the First Meeting of Creditors, on time, on the right day, and in the right room, and with your driver's license and your social security card?

Because if so, it's at least possible that your first meeting will be fairly routine, and the trustee will ask you a dozen and a half questions, and then everybody will trundle home.

And I have a video about the first meeting of creditors, and it's a little longer than some of my other videos, but a lot happens at a first meeting of creditors in Arizona, you know?

When Is a Liquidation not Really a Liquidation? When It's a Chapter 7 Case in Arizona!

So how often does a Chapter 7 bankruptcy get filed in the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Arizona?

Well, the last time I checked, pretty frequently.

About 82% of all cases filed, if I remember my statistics correctly, are Chapter 7 bankruptcy cases.

In a Chapter 7, the bankruptcy discharge is the McGuffen, the thing that is the object of the game.

And the bankruptcy exemptions are sort of the Phase One issue in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy case.

That is, assuming that you've done everything correctly, including passing the means test, filing in the right location, using the correct exemptions (not everybody is entitled to the Arizona Exemptions in the District of Arizona Bankruptcy Court, but that's a story for another day), sending copies of paperwork in response to The Trustee Letter, showing up on the right day in the right room for the First Meeting of Creditors with your social security card and your driver's license, the next two issues that are critical to you are 1)is the trustee going to object to my exemptions, and 2)is anybody going to object to my Bankruptcy Discharge, or the dischargeability of my debts?

Whew. Long paragraph.

But today we are lasering in on one topic: what percentage of Chapter 7 debtors are going to lose assets to a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Trustee in their cases in Arizona?

And the answer is something in the area of 4%.

That is, 96% of all Chapter 7 cases in Arizona are "no-asset" cases, and the trustee doesn't want to bother with administering those cases.

That means that in about four per cent of cases, a bankruptcy trustee will want your post-petition tax refund, or your non-exempt car, or your non-exempt piece of property in Minnesota, or your Golden Age All American Comics No. 16 (July 1940), or your Rolex Watch.

You filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy in Arizona and you still owned a Rolex Watch? Did you go to a Document Preparer? Serves you right. They can type your forms, but they can't give you legal advice, dummy!

But in any case, I discuss this topic at a little length in a video, and some people would like to get their information by reading, and some by listening to a video.

Takes all kinds to fill the freeways, you know?

So you gotta Rolex.

And you gotta file a bankruptcy, and you get to use the Arizona bankruptcy exemptions.

Well, me bucko, you will probably want to consider selling the watch for fair market value and buying food, fuel, provisions, or maybe a car (for the ever-popular five thousand dollars which is exempt in Arizona).

Or you may decide to use part of the proceeds to hire an Arizona bankruptcy attorney, your choice.

Now, a Rolex, particularly the Sub-mariner, is about as cool as any watch ever. Oh, sure, there are watches dripping with complications, like moonphase dials and stop-watch features, but the Sub-mariner is the Platonic Ideal of a watch.

Simple, clean lines, nifty automatic (self-winding) movement, water resistant down a very long way, and pretty accurate for a mechanical toy.

But it's not really for keeping time; that's what your cable box, cell phone and computer widget are for.

It's just for purposes of being a cool watch!

You should get it that I get it that you love your watch. Heck, I love your watch.

But it's just a watch!

Seriously.

So what you get to do is to figure out what new wrist-toy you'll be using until your economic rehabilitation is complete and you can buy another Rolex on the flip side of your bankruptcy in Arizona.

See, the exemption for a watch is $100. And a watch is really just a frippery anyway, because you'll be reading the time off of your cell phone, etc.

But I have a suggestion that may make your head explode a little less than it otherwise might: buy the Invicta I've reviewed on Amazon for about $100, and use the remainder of the proceeds from the sale of your Rolex Submariner to buy the stuff I talked about above.

And some folks would rather watch a video than read a blog, so here you go!

Should I File a Bankruptcy?

Well, here's a pretty precise answer.

I don't know.

When I get an email asking me if somebody should file a bankruptcy, it makes me a little hinky because it seems to me that it isn't a legal question: it's a personal, economic, and practical question.

On the one hand, there's the Joseph C. McDaniel Rule of Bankruptcy Inevitability, which I change on days ending with "y", which holds generally that if your unsecured debt (like credit card debt and mortgages that are underwater and medical debt) is greater than your yearly net income, there's probably a bankruptcy in your immediate future, partly because there's a lawsuit and a trustee's sale or mortgage foreclosure or debtor's exam in your immediate future.

Then there's another consideration: if you are pulling money out of a savings account, like a 401(k) or an IRA, in order to pay ordinary credit card debt minimum interest payments, I WANT YOU TO GET OFF YOUR TUCKUS AND FILE A BANKRUPTCY TO STOP THE BLEEDING!!!! Unless there's some great reason to wait, like the preference payment of $70,000 to mom, which just means that you'll be waiting to file for a year and a day or so after the date when mom cashed the check, or got the lien, or whatever.

Unless you don't like mom very much. In which case, how quick can you fill out the forms?

There are other considerations.

Some people have a moral revulsion when they year the word "bankruptcy".

I get it.

But do you know what they do to men who have prostate cancer? I have a moral revulsion to that as well, but I'll be right there in the take-a-number system if my PSA ever looks bad enough, you know?

And moral revulsion or no, there was a Jubilee Year in Leviticus where debts were forgiven without the asking, and that (along with the seven-year period) sounds a lot like a public, institutional bankruptcy to me. Although we're too darn good for the Bible, so we have an eight-year cycle in bankruptcy law now.

And sometimes you just gotta cowboy up and do what you gotta do.

And then there are a thousand mechanical details: No, you shouldn't file a bankruptcy until you pass the means test. No, you shouldn't file a bankruptcy until this is the right venue for you. No, you shouldn't file a bankruptcy until you spend your tax refund on milk and cookies and your Arizona bankruptcy lawyer.

But DO NOT SPEND THE RETIREMENT FUNDS YOU TOOK THIRTY YEARS TO BUILD UP MAKING MINIMUM PAYMENTS ON CREDIT CARD DEBT AFTER YOU LOSE YOUR JOB, unless a lawyer you have paid for advice tells you it's a great idea for you, after he understands everything about your situation!

In general, though, IT'S STUPID, AND PUTS A BURDEN ON YOUR CHILDREN, WHO WILL NEED TO SUPPORT YOU WHEN YOU ARE FINISHED THROWING YOUR RETIREMENT DOWN THE TOILET!!

On the other hand, that's just a personal opinion, and not a legal opinion in any way, manner or shape.

Note: there are a fair number of folks who think they need to file a bankruptcy and really don't. There are far more people who need to file (I'll plug in the study when I find it again) a bankruptcy and do not, instead spending themselves into beggary.

That's a bad thing, for future reference.

And if you already spent yourself into beggary, and you are finally ready to file a bankruptcy now that you have no money and all your non-exempt assets have all been seized by creditors, I will have to tell you the same thing that psychologists say to their patients: "My love is free. My time will cost ya."

But I won't point and jeer because you goofed up.

Because I get it.


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Sometimes people hate the message.

And almost as often, they get cranky with me when they hear what they don't want to hear.

And I am apparently a glutton for punishment, because I'm gonna keep telling 'em what they don't want to hear, just as I have for the last thirty years.

See, the statute that defines property of the estate is located at 11 USC 541. It was designed by the drafters to pick up everything that the debtor owns in any way, shape, manner or form. Including, for instance, mining claims on the Planet Neptune.

If you want to read the statute in it's undiluted form, here it is.

However, for ordinary people who have not been dipped in the magical protective coatings dispensed by law schools, reading statutes in their naked forms can be confusing, disorienting, scary, and confounding.

Kinda like letting somebody without a divinity degree read Revelations.

But here's what you need to take away from this discussion today: do not expect a lawyer to tell you that if you own real property (land; dirt; building; treehouse) in Canada, or real property in Mexico, or real property in Costa Rica, that you will a)not need to list that real property in your Chapter Whatever Bankruptcy in the United States, or that b)you will be able to keep it without paying for it.

Now, there are some possible outcomes that could make you happy.

One is that you list the property and the panel trustee who was appointed in your case doesn't want to bother with it because she's too busy and it's too much trouble for the apparent value of the dirt.

That could happen; don't count on it, but it could happen. A trustee is supposed to use the business judgment test to determine how best to deal with assets in a case, and they are seldom second-guessed.

On the other hand, another sorta decent result would be that you would buy back the property from the bankruptcy trustee at an auction held by the trustee, which auctions happen all the time. And about half the time, or more, the debtor who plugs in the first lowball bid walks away with the property, no matter whether it's a replica light saber with gold fittings valued at $4,723.93, or a piece of undeveloped land in Barcelona, Spain, valued at $16,345.92.

Now, here's a test to see whether you are sitting with the best bankruptcy lawyer in Arizona, or wherever you may be talking to a bankruptcy lawyer: if she says that you don't need to list real property that you own which is situated in Pakistan, he is not the best bankruptcy lawyer in Phoenix, or anyplace else.

Such advice will put you in stripes. Not pinstripes, not chalk stripes.

Prison pajamas. Get it?

And while I may sound relaxed about this (hey, I plan to sound relaxed when I'm telling the doc to crack my chest and gimmie another stent!), I am most certainly not relaxed on this topic.

Think about it: if you're going to get rid of a million dollars in debt, which is not at all unusual in Arizona these days, you will pay a price.

One of the most important prices you will pay is full disclosure on your schedules.

Back when the New Code and my ticket to practice law were new, there was a lot of weight given to the excuses, "I didn't understand. I was sick when I was filling out my schedules. I was dead at the time."

There is no sense of humor in the Arizona Bankruptcy Court these days in connection with failing to list a significant asset. And the U.S. Trustee's Office, a division of the U.S. Attorney's Office, has a zero-tolerance policy, and is at all times looking for poster children.

So if an instant bankruptcy expert, who was practicing personal injury law last week, tells you that you don't need to list an asset, ask him what he knows about 11 USC 541. Ask specifically with the numbers.

Be interesting to see if his head does that trick from The Exorcist.

p.s. it is not uncommon for an experienced, capable Arizona bankruptcy attorney to discuss the sale of a non-exempt asset and the use of the proceeds for living expenses and the purchase or paydown of a lien on exempt assets. The legislative history of the New Code said that without more, the conversion of non-exempt to exempt assets on the eve of filing was not fraudulent as to creditors.

And that sounds simple. In fact, there is a phrase that has some currency in the case law, which is "pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered", in connection with pre-bankruptcy planning.

And, of course, in any area where lawyers work, nothing is simple.

And whether you are scraping off twenty million dollars in debt, or twenty thousand, there is always risk in any bankruptcy filing.



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The plight of the family farmer is the same in this generation as it was during the Great Depression.

With a cherry on top.

The additional issue farmers have to face now is inflation.

That is, twenty years ago hay sold for $5.00 a bale.

And hay, today, sells for....$5.00 a bale!

But the cost of diesel twenty years ago was 67 cents a gallon; now it's $2.67 or more.

And twine, which was $17 dollars a box, has now more than doubled.

Get the picture?

Lenin said that the middle class had to be ground between the twin millstones of taxation and inflation, in order to destroy it.

Seems like it doesn't much matter whether the inflation is in Russia or in the United States: inflation is pretty rough on the rapidly-shrinking middle class.

And you'll wonder why I say that big corporations assist in destroying family farms? Well, they're the guys who buy the farms from the banks, after the banks have foreclosed on the farm.

Pretty rotten, yes?

Putting it a different way, if all of the politicians in the United States disappeared overnight, there's a good chance that things would not change for the worse in any material ways.

On the other hand, if all the farmers in the United States vanished overnight, we'd starve.

If Houdini asked for my input before the disappearing act, I know which way I'd like to see it work.


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I've always taken the position that you should never hire anybody unless they were smarter than you were, because....otherwise, why bother?

You can only get a glimmer of Nina's Summa Cum Laude Undergraduate brilliance, passing the bar exam first time thank-you-very-much, steel trap mind during this discussion.

But so far, my clients like her a lot more than they like me, and I can understand that.

After all, Heidi the Bankruptcy Angel, my paralegal, likes her more than she likes me.

And I noticed the other day that I like her more than I like me!

And in this video she talks about some credit card and preference issues, and her accent is a little stronger here, because she's a person, not a newscaster, and she's happy to talk in Court, but not so much in front of a camera!




p.s. I forgot to mention that even though she may look like a high-school student, she's a really, really smart Arizona Bankruptcy Attorney. And, so far, the Arizona Bankruptcy Trustees seem to like her, too.





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There's an old gag that says that talk is cheap, until you hire a lawyer!

So I started making some educational bankruptcy videos to help my clients understand some parts of bankruptcy law and analysis, because some people won't read.

Some folks like to read, some hate it. No big.

So, realizing that my goal of educating the planet on bankruptcy law was in jeopardy, I made my first batch of bankruptcy videos.

And, boy, were they bad!!! Yowsa!!

Then I gave up and started over, and did another thirty-five or so.

They were better, but I was apparently even more boring than usual, because the guy running the camera required both the Jaws of Life and a defibrillator when he went into a coma during the shooting session.

On the other hand, the production values were better!

The third bundle of videos seems to be less horrible. Some people have said they don't make 'em throw up nearly as much as the others.

So if you want to risk your popcorn, here I am talking about things like what happens at a first meeting of creditors, where to put the stake in a zombie debt collector, what you might tell a debtor collector on the phone when you're going to file a bankruptcy, and a lot of other fun stuff!

And it's all here on my YouTube Channel!

Oh, and bookmark it, please.

I've got many more on the way!


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I started today in a fairly good mood.

Yesterday I talked to one of the nicest ladies I've met in a while, and she told me about having lost 20 pounds on The Anxiety Diet, because of her worries about her debts.

I fixed her problems and sent her on her way. Life was good.

This morning I planned to write again about those darned Homeowners Associations. The problem with many of 'em is that they'll chase a poor debtor after his bankruptcy for homeowners dues until the bank gets off it's dead corporate behind and finishes a trustee's sale.

And the 2005 Amendments permit that, and I can't do a lot to fix that, but I'm working on it. Makes me crazy when my debtor client's don't have a perfectly clean fresh start.

And I was still having a nice day until I went to find a nice link about homeowner's associations and bankruptcy.

But my blood pressure went up (that's bad, at my age) more than usual when I ran into an article about a Homeowner's Association that doesn't want a medal of honor recipient to put up a flagpole so he can fly an American Flag.

DO NOT GO READ THIS ARTICLE IF YOU ALREADY HAVE HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE. DO NOT GO READ ABOUT THIS IF HARSH LANGUAGE MAKES YOU FAINT.

THE GUY WHO WROTE THIS POST USES HARSH LANGUAGE WHEN HE DESCRIBES THIS HOMEOWNER'S ASSOCIATION, AND IF THEY SUED THIS 90 YEAR OLD HERO, THEY DESERVE MUCH WORSE LANGUAGE THAN THE AUTHOR USED, IN MY HUMBLE OPINION.

So if you want to send mean letters to somebody to tell them to back off of their position, and you can afford the stamp, it won't hurt my feelings.

But don't complain to me about your blood pressure or your harsh language receptors, because I warned you!



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Before you file a bankruptcy in Arizona, or anyplace else, you have probably moved through a downward spiral of economic destruction that involved pay cuts, getting fired, getting sued, collectors, a divorce, deep emotional depression, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Sure, fun to write about it; not so much fun to experience.

There's a specialized class of collection guys who are even lower on my hit parade than most debt collectors, and those are the guys who work to collect time-barred debts that are barred by the relevant statute of limitations.

So I talked about 'em a little in a recent bankruptcy video; it's only a short one, but that's more than they deserve!




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I have written previously about finding a bankruptcy lawyer by triangulating with three different websites: Martindale.com, Findlaw.com, and AVVO.com. And because I wrote it, I think that was a good post!

All three are directories where you can track the wild lawyer to his or her lair.

All are easy to find on the Internet, because all of them get a lotta hits every day from people looking to find a bankruptcy lawyer, or a divorce lawyer, or a litigator, or a probate attorney.

Why would I suggest that people use an online directory to find a lawyer? Well, you can't all hire me! A lot of my readers are in jurisdictions where I don't practice law.

Heck, a lot of my bankruptcy blog readers are in India! I never fully understood that, but I love my readers, wherever they may be.

But I want folks to find the best attorney possible to file and prosecute their bankruptcy cases, whether that will be in Arizona or in Minnesota (which is, to me, an exotic location indeed).

So how to find a bankruptcy lawyer when you're stressed, anxious, and crunched for time? But when finding the right lawyer is actually a bet-the-farm kind of exercise?

Well, I like AVVO.com a lot. And even more now than when I wrote my prior post about finding a lawyer by triangulation.

For many, many years, Martindale was the only game in town when you were a sophisticated user of legal services and didn't want to get fired by the COO or CEO at your company for hiring the wrong lawyer.

It probably still is the best tool for avoiding getting fired for hiring the wrong lawyer, actually. Because CEOs are used to hearing the line, "Boss, the guy had a Martindale AV rating! What more could I have done?"

But for ordinary folks, and even extraordinary folks who are looking for lawyers, AVVO.com is the new eight-hundred pound gorilla of lawyer directories.

It's simply a better mousetrap for everybody in the picture.

For lawyers who want to list their information online, it's My Favorite Price!

For consumers of legal services, it's My Favorite Price!

But frankly, if you could pay money as a consumer to make sure that the lawyer you were about to hire was the right lawyer, you couldn't do much better than AVVO, in my humble opinion.

For one thing, your time has value. And if you have to spend an hour figuring out how to navigate a difficult website, that's bad. And if you can't tell the difference between guys on a website who show up high in the rankings because they paid for the privilege, that's bad.

Now, you can pay to advertise on AVVO, and because it's a fairly new service, AVVO rates are competitive. I use 'em myself. But it's very clear which lawyers paid to be listed first on the page in a category, and which lawyers show up high because of their AVVO ranking.

That's a good thing.

AVVO tries to post a listing for every single lawyer in practice, to the extent that it can; I don't know how quickly it lists baby lawyers when they get their ticket to practice, but that's a quibble. And for all I know, maybe AVVO missed a lawyer who lives in the swamp somewhere; as far as I can tell, everybody is at the party.

Some lawyers have chosen to populate their profile on AVVO with information so that prospective clients can make informed decisions. Some lawyers can't be bothered.

Fine either way, right?

And AVVO is currently in the top three online directories for lawyers (I said that because I think it's number one, but I don't have time to check the statistics). So a lawyer who hasn't filled in his info on AVVO clearly doesn't care whether you know anything about her. Or him. Or them.

You get it.

Let's get back to "your time has value".

When you search for a lawyer on AVVO, you can do broad-based geographical searches at the click of a button. You can tighten the noose until you're looking only for lawyers in Phoenix, Arizona, or Glendale.

You can then sort further, looking for lawyers who have client reviews. And you can read those client reviews, right?

That's actually a big deal, because lawyers may say nice things about themselves, and lawyers may say nice things about other lawyers, but if a client can say anything she wants about a lawyer, well, the lawyer had better work to make all their clients as happy as possible.

Note that it's inevitable that all lawyers will eventually get clients who hate them, or their services, so searching reviews is exactly like searching reviews on Amazon. After all, there are even people who don't like the Invicta Automatic Watch, water-resistant to deeper in the ocean than the wearer!

You can also tell whether AVVO has tracked down any indication that the lawyer you found has been the subject of any bar discipline, which shows up as a big red electronic flag.

You can also search by the AVVO lawyer rating, which is a numerical score given to lawyers by a computer algorithm, whatever that is.

But whatever a computer algorithm is, my guess is that it's hard to bribe, and it can't be bought (based on statements made by the folks who run AVVO; I didn't try. Really.), and you can sort for lawyers who give free initial interviews, lawyers who have been endorsed by other lawyers, and lawyers who have been reviewed by clients.

So here's what you can take away from this rant: if you are in a jurisdiction where I am not, so you can't hire me.

If you are an extraordinary person with remarkable legal needs, or an ordinary Joe or Jane with ordinary needs, you want to know what your lawyer can do for you, what their education and bar background are, what they have in the way of certifications, honors and awards, and you want to know what their prior clients thought about them.

You can find all that, and more, on AVVO.com.

For My Favorite Price!

p.s. it's blindingly fast and easy to use.

p.p.s. I forgot the downside. Oh, yeah. As far I as I can tell at this point, it doesn't have one. I'll come back to this post and rework it if I find a fatal flaw in this lawyer directory, but so far, I haven't found anything that wasn't well put together when they designed the program.

p.p.p.s. I just figured out what's wrong with AVVO. It doesn't list doctors and rate them, and let their clients rate them. That would be a very useful service, if it were done exactly the same way.

But since AVVO wasn't designed to rate doctors, I can't downgrade my rating of AVVO very much for that.

Some. Just not very much!

p.p.p.p.s. I noticed recently that not all lawyers love AVVO.com, although I don't understand why. Apparently all clients looking for information about lawyers do love AVVO.com, although if a client sues AVVO.com for something or another, I'll be happy to tell you about it as soon as I see it. Up until now, all lawyers suing AVVO that I know about have had their cases booted out the door of the Courthouse, but you never know what will happen in any Court.

On the other hand, if the lawyer who recently sued AVVO.com had not sued AVVO, everybody in the United States and India wouldn't currently be reading about why AVVO posted a little red flag on his profile.

I have no clue whether there's a lesson here for lawyers.

p.s. AVVO.com now lists doctors, too! Woo-hoo!