Category: Chapter 13

  • Savings Plans and Chapter 13

    Posted by

    Mitu Gulati

    David Jones, Chief US Bankruptcy Judge of the Southern District of Texas, has just posted a nifty empirical study of the effects of savings plans on the success of Chapter 13 filings. And, yes, part of the cool study is figuring out how to measure what counts as success in a bankruptcy filing.  The study takes advantage of a natural experiment in the Texas courts and has a bunch of fascinating findings, including about the impact of lawyers and legal culture on the choices that end up being made by the subjects of the bankruptcy proceedings.

    Part of the reason I know about this study is that David was doing a graduate degree at Duke (in the judicial masters program) and I got to see the project at its inception stage in the thesis workshop that I run with Jack Knight. All of the credit goes to David though (and his wonderful advisor, John de Figueiredo) — a fact that will be obvious to my fellow slipsters who know that I don't know squat about Chapter 13. But this is a fun study in terms of the design and findings regardless of whether you love Chapter 13 (okay, I realize that everyone else who reads this blog probably does in fact like or love Chapter 13).  It takes a basic fact about the inevitable fluctuations in expenses that almost everyone has to deal with, and tests what happens when these provision is made for these fluctuations ahead of time (versus when it is not).  Savings plans do indeed seem to make a difference; but a bunch of other factors also appear to matter – some of them quite surprising.  Clearly, as David emphasizes at the end of the paper, there is a lot here that is worthy of further investigation (and maybe legislative change).

    The abstract for the draft on ssrn (that is forthcoming in the American Bankruptcy Institute's journal) reads:

    This paper examines the effects of debtor savings on the viability of chapter 13 bankruptcy plans. The paper further examines the impact of lawyer culture, debtor participation in the bankruptcy process, and judicial activism in the use of the savings program by chapter 13 debtors. Using a data set of randomly selected chapter 13 bankruptcy cases filed in the Southern District of Texas, the analysis demonstrates that while savings has a direct positive impact on the success of chapter 13 plans, the degree of that success is significantly influenced by the views held by debtors' lawyers, chapter 13 trustees, and judges.

     

  • ProPublica: The Bankruptcy System Fails Black Americans

    Posted by

    Bob Lawless

    It's been a busy day, but before I sign off for the evening, I would be remiss not to flag Paul Kiel's outstanding piece that came out this morning, How the Bankruptcy System is Failing Black Americans. ProPublica and The Atlantic co-published the article. An extensive data analysis also accompanies the article. Anyone who follows Credit Slips will want to read these pieces.

    Kiel finds chapter 13 filings are about three times higher in predominately black zip codes as compared to predominately white zip codes. Of course, these findings very much parallel our earlier work, which I blogged about here back in 2012. Like our work, the disparities Kiel finds remain even after statistically controlling for financial and other variables that should determine chapter choice. Because chapter 13 is generally a more expensive choice than a chapter 7, requiring a payment plan that many debtors don't complete (and hence don't receive a discharge), the racial differences are troubling.

    Where Kiel's article really shines are the interviews with the attorneys and bankruptcy debtors in Memphis, Tennessee. The interviews put faces and stories to the statistics that we can't do in academic studies. Check out Kiel's work.

  • Midland Got It Right (Sort Of)

    Posted by

    Adam Levitin

    The Supreme Court got it right in Midland Funding LLC v. Johnson, which holds that it is not a violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to file a proof of claim in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy based on a debt whose statute of limitations has expired.  

    I suspect that I might be the only bankruptcy professor whose name doesn't start with the last two letters of the alphabet who isn't outraged by Midland (which gives a nice shout out to our former co-blogger Katie Porter's scholarship!), and I'm going to catch hell for writing this, but one of the great things about tenure is that I can say things like this.  So here goes.  I don't think Midland is a very persuasive opinion; it's not the reasoning I would adopt, but I think it gets the right answer, even if it is uncomfortable as a policy result (it's hard to defend an industry whose economics are dependent upon careless trustees and debtors). 

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  • New Article from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project: Attorneys’ Fees and Chapter Choice

    Posted by

    Pamela Foohey

    Many of us on Credit Slips have been part of the Consumer Bankruptcy Project (CBP), a long-term research project studying people who file chapter 7 and 13 bankruptcy. Several years ago, some of us blogged about the writings from the last CBP iteration in 2007.  In 2013, the CBP was relaunched as an ongoing data collection effort. The CBP’s current co-investigators – myself, Bob Lawless, Katie Porter, and Debb Thorne – recently posted “No Money Down” Bankruptcy, the first article analyzing data from the Current CBP (data from 2013-2015), combined with 2007 CPB data. The article focuses on the timing of when debtors are required to pay their bankruptcy attorneys to report on the increasingly prevalent phenomenon of debtors paying nothing in attorneys’ fees before filing chapter 13.

    This nationwide phenomenon raises questions about how people are accessing bankruptcy and the extent of the benefits they receive from the system. The phenomenon also explains some prior findings about the intersection of race and bankruptcy filings. And it adds to our knowledge about regional disparities in the percentage of people who file chapter 7 versus chapter 13 bankruptcies.

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  • Initial Attorney Reactions to the New Bankruptcy Forms

    Posted by

    Pamela Foohey

    Help ImageYesterday I spoke at the Oklahoma Bar Association's annual advanced bankruptcy seminar. My talk focused on my research into chapter 11 cases filed by churches, a few of which are from Oklahoma. But the seminar's timing aligned perfectly with the roll out of the new bankruptcy forms. And unsurprisingly the first hour of the seminar was devoted to introducing and discussing the forms. A debtor attorney who handles chapter 7, 11, 12, and 13 cases — Brian Huckabee — parsed through some of the forms and added some initial comments. My take-away is that debtor attorneys' chief concern is that the readability and understandability of the forms will make it easier for debtors to file pro se, taking work away from attorneys ("this is self-service!"), a concern which was raised during the public-comment period. A related concern was voiced by a chapter 7 trustee: that chapter 7 (and 13) trustees will end up spending more time working through each case.

    Three items during the discussion stood out to me. The first two relate to the "self-service" nature of the forms, particularly the new forms' instructions and white space. The last item goes to an attachment to the proof of claim form, Form 410A — Mortgage Proof of Claim Attachment. 

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  • The Weight To Be Given To Comments From Bankruptcy Judges On Proposed Bankruptcy Rules and Forms

    Posted by

    david lander

     The Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules (and forms) has been quite active and successful over the past decade in improving the practice of law in the Bankruptcy Courts.  Some of their major innovations such as the overhaul of the process for appealing a decision of the bankruptcy court have engendered little comment and have been deemed important contributions to justice.  Others, such as the responses to changes in the consumer credit and consumer mortgage industries have engendered very active comment from both the creditor and debtor communities and the Committee has endeavored to evaluate carefully all such comments to make certain the proposed rules and forms are not only well written and thought through but also fair to both sides.  In the business bankruptcy  realm the proposed rules governing Informal Committees (2019) engendered significant comment from the claims buying industry and the Committee made numerous changes in response to those comments.

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  • Who “Presides” over Chapter 13 Plan Confirmation Hearings?

    Posted by

    Melissa Jacoby

    Shutterstock_329900393Temple Law Review will soon publish a volume honoring Bill Whitford, based on a conference from last fall. That event was particularly special for an additional reason: it turned out to be the last opportunity, for many of us, to spend time with another inspiring leader in our field, Jean Braucher. 

    My own short contribution, on judicial oversight in chapter 13 bankruptcies, has just been posted here. We will share the word when the entire volume is available – including, I believe, a piece from Jean.

    Gavel image courtesy of Shutterstock

  • Postpetition Wages Held by Chapter 13 Trustee Belong to Debtor Upon Conversion

    Posted by

    Pamela Foohey

    In case you haven't seen it, the SCOTUS issued its unanimous opinion in Harris today, holding that postpetition wages held by the Chapter 13 trustee at the time a case is converted to Chapter 7 must be returned to the debtor. When the Fifth Circuit issued its decision that created the split with the Third Circuit, I blogged some thoughts, primarily focusing on statutory analysis. Now that the SCOTUS has weighed in, the practical question is: how can creditors protect themselves from the risk that the trustee will accumulate a large sum of postpetition wages? Today's opinion ends with that question and notes that the amount of postpetition wages a particular Chapter 13 trustee will be holding at the time of conversion will depend upon the practices of that trustee. In addition, as in the case before the Third Circuit, sometimes Chapter 13 trustees accumulate funds because creditors refuse to receive plan payments for whatever reason.

    Today's opinion suggests that creditors can include a disbursement schedule in the Chapter 13 plan. The Third Circuit's opinion sets out a few other ideas (see fn 9), including requesting plan modification if a creditor is refusing to accept payments. Perhaps the most effective protection suggested by the Third Circuit is for the plan to provide that payments vest in creditors immediately upon receipt by the Chapter 13 trustee, and to include similar language in the order confirming the plan. The Third Circuit, however, explicitly noted that it was not ruling on whether such language would remove accumulated undistributed payments from revesting with the debtor upon conversion. Today's opinion notes that a plan that provides that payments are property of the estate (as the plan provided in Harris) does not change the outcome that undistributed postpetition wages revest with the debtor upon conversion. But that still seems to leave creditor vesting language as a potential way for creditors to protect themselves.

  • Stale Debts in Bankruptcy

    Posted by

    Dalie Jimenez

    Should liability under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) lie against a creditor who submits a proof of claim past the statute of limitations in a consumer bankruptcy case?

    That is the question the Supreme Court declined to review recently in LVNV Funding, LLC v. Crawford. In Crawford, the Eleventh Circuit applied the "least sophisticated consumer" standard to find liability for the debt buyer when it submitted a proof of claim in 2008 for a debt that was out of statute as of 2004. Other courts have held differently. In fact, just last month, district courts in Indiana and Pennsylvania dismissed FDCPA suits against debt buyers under essentially the same facts as Crawford. Other courts, including the Second Circuit, have seemingly held that FDCPA liability can never lie in a bankruptcy case.

    Putting the merits of applying the FDCPA in a bankruptcy case aside, it seems to me that in this specific instance potential liability under the Act could serve very useful functions: namely efficiency and cost savings.

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  • Scarcity of Money? Or Time?

    Posted by

    Katie Porter

    How is it that I never find the time to blog? My answer would be that I simply do not have the time. But of course I have the same hours in a day as my co-bloggers. I could argue that I have more demands on my time, but I know very well that we are all busy. Scarcity, a book by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, has many lessons for busy people, including those of us who are busy thinking about the difficulties faced by people who have a scarcity of income or disposable income after debt. 

    The book looks at scarcity in varied contexts such as time, money, food, friendship. It argues that there is a common logic to situations of scarcity: a mindset that captures our attention and changes how we think. At an optimal level, scarcity can create positive focus. But the same capture of the mind can preoccupy us and make us vulnerable to poor thinking and impulse control. ScarcityThe authors find, for example, that being poor reduces a person's cognitive capacity more than going one full night without sleep.

    The implications for those in financial scarcity are powerful, particularly in terms of policy intervention. The authors focus on the need for "slack" in program design; for example, job training programs with modular classes that can be taken out of order so if a person misses a class, they can more easily make up the class rather than falling behind on linear content and having to drop out.

    My thinking went to chapter 13 and the debate about a "cushion" in chapter 13 plans. While some judges and trustees permit this (or even insist on it), others see it as an indication of weakness. If you deserve a discharge, you need to learn within limits. The scarcity of a confirmed chapter 13 plan, with its 100% draw on all disposable income, creates a mindset that can itself be harmful. People with some financial slack may, in fact, be better able to build the financial habits and position themselves for the rehabilitation that is bankruptcy's goal. Building financial savings into chapter 13 as a necessary expense would reduce the cognitive burden of bankruptcy and insulate people from the harms of financial scarcity after bankruptcy. The result, according to the research of Mullainathan and Shafir, would be debtors emerging from bankruptcy with better self-control, more focus, and stronger decisionmaking.