The Bankruptcy Code confers upon debtors or trustees, as the case may be, the power to avoid certain preferential or fraudulent transfers made to creditors within prescribed guidelines and limitations. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Mexico recently addressed the contours of these powers through a recent decision inU.S. Glove v. Jacobs, Adv. No. 21-1009, (Bankr. D.N.M.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, legislation was introduced during 2020 to prevent creditors filing statutory demands and winding up petitions on the basis of their debtor's inability to pay its debts, unless it could be shown that non-payment was not a result of the pandemic. These temporary measures had been extended a number of times during the pandemic as businesses continued to suffer the effects of multiple lockdowns and trading restrictions, but are now gradually being phased out.

The UK Government has announced a further extension to certain protective measures for businesses which are currently in place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the pandemic, the UK Government has put legislative measures in place to protect commercial tenants by preventing landlords from using certain remedies such as forfeiture and winding up petitions. However, the legislation does not specifically prevent a landlord from issuing debt claims against its tenants for arrears of rent and other amounts due under a lease (see the recent case of Commerz Real Investmentgesellschaft mbh v TFS Stores Limited [2021] EWHC 863 (Ch)).

In In re Smith, (B.A.P. 10th Cir., Aug. 18, 2020), the U.S. Bankruptcy Appellate Panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit recently joined the majority of circuit courts of appeals in finding that a creditor seeking a judgment of nondischargeability must demonstrate that the injury caused by the prepetition debtor was both willful and malicious under Section 523(a)(6) of the Bankruptcy Code.

Factual Background

In a recent decision, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York held that claim disallowance issues under Section 502(d) of the Bankruptcy Code "travel with" the claim, and not with the claimant. Declining to follow a published district court decision from the same federal district, the bankruptcy court found that section 502(d) applies to disallow a transferred claim regardless of whether the transferee acquired its claim through an assignment or an outright sale. See In re Firestar Diamond, 615 B.R. 161 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 2020).

InIn re Juarez, 603 B.R. 610 (9th Cir. BAP 2019), the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit addressed a question of first impression in the circuit with respect to property that is exempt from creditor reach: it adopted the view that, under the "new value exception" to the "absolute priority rule," an individual Chapter 11 debtor intending to retain such property need not make a "new value" contribution covering the value of the exemption.

Background

In In re Palladino, 942 F.3d 55 (1st Cir. 2019), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit addressed whether a debtor receives “reasonably equivalent value” in exchange for paying his adult child’s college tuition. The Palladino court answered this question in the negative, thereby contributing to the growing circuit split regarding the avoidability of debtors’ college tuition payments for their adult children as constructively fraudulent transfers.

Background

In a matter of first impression, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of New York recently analyzed whether a debtor may exempt from her bankruptcy estate a retirement account that was bequeathed to her upon the death of her parent. In In re Todd, 585 B.R. 297 (Bankr. N.D.N.Y 2018), the court addressed an objection to a debtor’s claim of exemption in an inherited retirement account, and held that the property was not exempt under New York and federal law.

In Kaye v. Blue Bell Creameries (In re BFW Liquidation), 899 F.3d 1178 (11th Cir. 2018), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit found that a liability for an allegedly preferential transfer may be reduced by the amount of new value given, regardless of whether that new value has already been repaid by the debtor before its bankruptcy filing.