The Eleventh Circuit has held that amounts paid post-petition for an administrative expense claim under Section 503(b)(9) of the Bankruptcy Code do not reduce the “new value” otherwise available to the creditor as a defense to a preference claim. Auriga Polymers Inc. v. PMCM2, LLC, 2022 U.S. App. LEXIS 19761 (11th Cir. July 18, 2022).

In Jackson v. Le Centre on Fourth, LLC (In re Le Centre on Fourth, LLC), 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 33845 (11th Cir. Nov. 15, 2021), the Eleventh Circuit rejected creditors’ due process challenge to the release afforded to the debtor’s affiliates in a confirmed Chapter 11 plan.

Florida law provides that a UCC-1 financing statement is “seriously misleading” if it does not include the debtor’s correct name, unless “a search of the records of the filing office under the debtor’s correct name, using the filing office’s standard search logic, if any, would disclose” the financing statement notwithstanding the misnomer. But how much of a search is required?

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recently ruled in a case involving a Chapter 13 debtors’ attempt to shield contributions to a 401(k) retirement account from “projected disposable income,” therefore making such amounts inaccessible to the debtors’ creditors.^[1] For the reasons explained below, the Sixth Circuit rejected the debtors’ arguments.

Case Background

A statute must be interpreted and enforced as written, regardless, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, “of whether a court likes the results of that application in a particular case.” That legal maxim guided the Sixth Circuit’s reasoning in a recent decision^[1] in a case involving a Chapter 13 debtor’s repeated filings and requests for dismissal of his bankruptcy cases in order to avoid foreclosure of his home.

On January 14, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court decided City of Chicago, Illinois v. Fulton (Case No. 19-357, Jan. 14, 2021), a case which examined whether merely retaining estate property after a bankruptcy filing violates the automatic stay provided for by §362(a) of the Bankruptcy Code. The Court overruled the bankruptcy court and U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in deciding that mere retention of property does not violate the automatic stay.

Case Background

When an individual files a Chapter 7 bankruptcy case, the debtor’s non-exempt assets become property of the estate that is used to pay creditors. “Property of the estate” is a defined term under the Bankruptcy Code, so a disputed question in many cases is: What assets are, in fact, available to creditors?

Once a Chapter 7 debtor receives a discharge of personal debts, creditors are enjoined from taking action to collect, recover, or offset such debts. However, unlike personal debts, liens held by secured creditors “ride through” bankruptcy. The underlying debt secured by the lien may be extinguished, but as long as the lien is valid it survives the bankruptcy.

A Chapter 13 bankruptcy plan requires a debtor to satisfy unsecured debts by paying all “projected disposable income” to unsecured creditors over a five-year period. In a recent case before the U.S.

One of the objectives of the Bankruptcy Code is to ensure that each class of creditors is treated equally. And one of the ways that is accomplished is to allow the debtor’s estate to claw back certain pre-petition payments made to creditors. Accordingly, creditors of a debtor who files for bankruptcy are often unpleasantly surprised to learn that they may be forced to relinquish “preferential” payments they received before the bankruptcy filing.