Abstract: When Congress amended the Bankruptcy Code in 2005 through the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA), it mandated that individual consumer debtors undergo two debtor education courses, one as a condition precedent to filing for bankruptcy relief, and a second for later receiving a discharge of indebtedness.

Abstract: Most individual debtors file for bankruptcy relief with honest intentions. Nonetheless, there is also an underside to the American bankruptcy law system that often goes unreported and ignored in the scholarly literature, namely, the commission of fraud by debtors who seek protection under the Bankruptcy Code. One of the ways in which fraud upon the bankruptcy system occurs is when debtors intentionally conceal assets from the bankruptcy process.

Abstract: Filing for bankruptcy is the primary legal mechanism by which homeowners in foreclosure can exert control over ownership of their home, yet little is known about the interplay between bankruptcy chapters, mortgage servicers, state foreclosure laws, and home foreclosure auctions. We analyze 4,280 lower-income homeowners in the United States who were more than 90 days late paying their 30-year fixed-rate mortgages. Two dozen organizations serviced these mortgages and initiated foreclosure between 2003 and 2012.

Abstract: In The Price of Inequality, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz explores the growing problem of wealth inequality in the United States.1 Stiglitz, riding the momentum of the Occupy Wall Street protests and “the 99 percent” political slogan, argues that economic and political factors have worked in concert to increasingly help shift wealth from the middle and lower classes to those at the top of the American socioeconomic ladder.

Abstract: The Supreme Court’s ruling in Stern v. Marshall has signaled a need to alter the bankruptcy court’s jurisdictional structure. In Stern, the Supreme Court ruled that bankruptcy judges, who lack the life tenure and salary protection of Article III, cannot issue final rulings in bankruptcy proceedings previously believed to be within their core jurisdiction.

Abstract: Since the price peak in 2006, home values have fallen more than 30%, leaving millions of Americans with negative equity in their homes. Until the Supreme Court’s 1993 decision in Nobelman v. American Savings Bank, the bankruptcy system would have provided many such homeowners with a remedy. They could have filed bankruptcy, discharged the negative equity, committed to pay the mortgage holders the full values of their homes, and retained those homes.

Abstract: Loss mitigation actions (e.g., liquidation, renegotiation) of delinquent mortgages might be hampered by conflicting goals of lenders at different seniority. In particular, a servicer has less incentive to take certain actions to reduce losses of investor-owned first lien mortgages if the servicer happens to own the second lien claim secured by the same property. Rather, the servicer has an incentive to hold up loss mitigation as it seeks to preserve the values of its own, junior, claim.

Summary: This report publishes the survey results of the United States Consumer Law Attorney Fee Survey Report 2010-2011 for the ten largest U.S.

Abstract: This Article explores a significant market-based threat to the Truth in Lending Act’s (“TILA”) right of rescission, a remedy that attempts to deter lender overreaching and fraud during one of the most complex financial transactions of a consumer’s lifetime.

Summary: This is another in the serious of the Inside the Minds books from Aspatore Books, here attempting to provide perspective from experienced Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 Trustees on how to administer consumer bankruptcy cases.