Desperate times call for desperate measures. It is not surprising then that a less than scrupulous debtor might be less than candid when disclosing assets and liabilities to a bankruptcy court. But what happens if an individual debtor is discovered to have concealed assets – possibly fraudulently or in bad faith – and then seeks to exercise his or her statutory right under the Bankruptcy Code to exempt all or a portion of the discovered assets from being available to satisfy creditors? Can a bankruptcy court in that circumstance look to the bad acts of the debtor as a basi
Introduction
Interested chapter 11 plan investors, beware. A recent decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that even after the chapter 11 plan has been confirmed and substantially consummated and your money has been invested, an appeal can go forward even if a victory for the appellants would change the chapter 11 plan terms on which you relied and substantially diminish the value of your investment.
Seeking to recharacterize a debt claim as an equity contribution to the debtor through the equitable powers of the bankruptcy court (something we’ve written about quite a bit in our blog) is one way to reduce creditor claims against the bankruptcy estate, but only in certain circuits.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit recently reversed the dismissal of a Chapter 13 bankruptcy debtor’s complaint filed in federal district court alleging that defendants foreclosed on and sold the debtor’s home in violation of the automatic stay, holding that the federal district court had subject matter jurisdiction and the complaint adequately stated a plausible claim for relief under 11 U.S.C. § 362(k).
Although almost all of an individual debtor’s assets become property of the estate upon a bankruptcy filing, certain exceptions exist to the rule at both the federal and state level. In some jurisdictions, funds held for a debtor in retirement plans are exempt assets. An open question, however, is whether payments distributed from such plans prior to the petition date are also exempt assets. The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit recently held in
“Many debtors…fail to complete a Chapter 13 [bankruptcy] plan successfully,” noted Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a recent Supreme Court decision, Harris v. Viegelahn, 135 S.Ct. 1829 (2015). It is for this reason that the Bankruptcy Code provides the nonwaiveable right of a debtor to convert a voluntary Chapter 13 case to a Chapter 7 case at any time. 11 U.S.C. § 1307(a). However, this conversion is not without its challenges. One such challenge is determining how postpetition wages that were collected during the Chapter 13 plan should be distributed after the conversion.
In a post-housing crisis economy, many homeowners, facing a plummet in home values, found themselves trapped in homes that are worth less than the amount they owe bank. Those homeowners have sought refuge in Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceedings, attempting to strip down the first mortgage and leaving many junior lienholders holding nothing but the bag—until now. In a big win for lenders, the U.S.
Last month, the Supreme Court announced its decision in Baker Botts LLP v. Asarco LLC. As most readers will be aware, that case involved a dispute over whether debtor’s retained counsel could be compensated for the fees and expenses incurred in the defense of its bankruptcy fee application.