Bankruptcy Basics
What belongs to the bankruptcy estate?
An inventory starts with legal interests, including property that is not sitting in your home or bank account.
THE REFERENCE DESK
The library.
Find your bearings. Follow the argument. Go back to the source.
Bankruptcy Basics
Bankruptcy exemptions: choosing the applicable rules
Why residence history, ownership, and equity matter before comparing exemption amounts.
Bankruptcy Basics
The discharge injunction and collection after bankruptcy
How personal liability changes after discharge, and what to preserve if collection continues.
Bankruptcy Basics
Why some debts survive an individual bankruptcy discharge
Read the specific exception and the applicable chapter before assuming a balance will disappear.
Bankruptcy Basics
Financial records and the risk of losing a Chapter 7 discharge
Disclosure failures can affect the discharge itself, beyond a dispute about one debt.
Bankruptcy Basics
The Chapter 7 means test: what the calculation can and cannot tell you
Understand the abuse framework before treating an online calculation as a filing decision.
Bankruptcy Basics
Credit counseling before filing: timing and exceptions
The prefiling briefing and the later financial management course serve different statutory requirements.
Bankruptcy Basics
Changing a confirmed Chapter 13 plan
Section 1329 permits specified changes before payments are complete, subject to continuing legal limits.
Bankruptcy Basics
Chapter 13 hardship discharge: three questions to examine
Relief before all plan payments are made has a demanding test and a more limited scope.
Bankruptcy Basics
Reopening a closed bankruptcy case
An order reopening the file and an order granting the desired relief answer different questions.
Bankruptcy Basics
How to read a bankruptcy court opinion
A repeatable method: identify the question, find the holding, then test its limits.
Bankruptcy Basics
Why Chapter 13 is a different conversation
A repayment-plan framework for eligible individuals with regular income.
Bankruptcy Basics
The language of bankruptcy, in plain English
Eight terms that make a notice or case review easier to follow.
Bankruptcy Basics
From filing to outcome: reading the case process
A simple orientation to a process whose details depend on the chapter and the case.
Bankruptcy Basics
Where to find the source behind a bankruptcy article
A short route to official forms, court explanations, and the actual decision.