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Once your Chapter 13 Bankruptcy Plan is approved by the Oregon Bankruptcy Court, a Confirmation Order is entered.  Among other things, the Confirmation Order bars you from taking on any credit obligations during the pendency of your case without the Oregon Chapter 13 Bankruptcy Trustee’s written approval. There are only two exceptions to obtaining prior written approval for taking out credit. In the event of emergency no written approval is required. Similarly, no written approval is requried for run of the mill expenses for a business approved in your plan
Normally any request for credit must be approved by the Trustee in writing before you obligate yourself in any way. The most common credit obligation you may wish to incur is a car loan. Contact your lawyer if you want to take on a car loan. Car dealers will attempt to talk you into anything before your attorney has had a chance to get involved. The Trustee will almost alway approve requests to finance vehicles, provided that the proper procedures are followed and the car loan itself meets certain guidelines.

The original post is titled Oregon Chapter 13 Bankruptcy and Taking Out Credit , and it came from Portland Bankruptcy Attorney | Northwest Debt Relief .

Big Banks Plead Guilty to Criminal Charges
The banks — Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, UBS, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland Group — were hit with $5.6 billion in fines and penalties.
Article in the Washington Post: Last week, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch announced that five major banks were pleading guilty to criminal charges for what she described as a “brazen display of collusion” to manipulate the currency markets. 
Sensibly, the banks were forced to plead guilty, not simply pay fines in settlements where they neither admitted nor denied the changes. But the charges still were brought against banks, not bankers. No banker was held accountable. The personal fortunes of the bankers who profited were not touched. Shareholders, not bankers, will pay the fines. The Justice Department would have us believe that criminal banks ran profitable criminal conspiracies without involving any bankers.

Read Washington Post article....
The post Big Banks Plead Guilty to Criminal Charges appeared first on Diane L. Drain - Phoenix Bankruptcy & Foreclosure Attorney.

In Oregon every Chapter 13 bankruptcy must have a plan. In essence, the plan is really a summary distributed to your creditors that lets them know how you intend to take care of your debt issues. Once your plan is approved, the Oregon Bankruptcy Court will regard your Chapter 13 plan as a contract between you and your creditors. Of course like any contract, your Plan is subject to modification in the event your financial circumstances change. In the absence of a modification, the Oregon Bankruptcy Court will take your approved very seriously and will insist that you adhere to the contract’s terms. If you have filed a Chapter 13 Bankruptcy in Oregon and you don’t have a copy of your plan, get it and read it thoroughly.
The Oregon Chapter 13 Trustee must pay your creditors exactly as required by your plan. The Trustee does not have the power to change its terms. If you do need to change your plan, confer with your Oregon bankruptcy attorney so that an amended plan can be filed for the Bankruptcy Court’s approval.
Creditors get a chance to review your Chapter 13 Bankruptcy Plan prior to the first meeting of creditors and they may file objections to their treatment if they don’t like how their claims are treated. Once the plan has been sent to your creditors, you will meet with the Trustee’s attorney for what is called a 341 hearing to go over the plan, make any changes required and, if any creditors appear, to give them a chance to ask any questions they might have.
Roughly six weeks after the 341 hearing, you will have what is called a confirmation hearing. If you have an attorney, he or she will appear on your behalf. At that hearing, the judge will hear from the Trustee and any creditors that want to object to their treatment in the plan. Once the judge is satisfied with the Plan’s terms, the judge “confirms” your plan and signs an Order of the court that approves your plan that binds both you and your creditors to the contract, or in this case, the plan. The terms of this Plan will be operable for the remainder of your Plan until you file a Modified Plan. In the event that a Modified Plan is filed, the steps for getting it approved are largely the same as the process for getting your initial Plan approved with one major exception: You will not have to attend another 341 hearing.

The original post is titled Filing Chapter 13 Bankruptcy in Oregon and the Plan , and it came from Portland Bankruptcy Attorney | Northwest Debt Relief .

Just because you list a student loan debt on your bankruptcy case doesn’t mean it’s wiped out once the case is over. You need to take additional action – but before that, you need to do your homework.
Once upon a time, student loans were dischargeable in bankruptcy court.
As the years went by, more limits were placed on people who wanted to wipe out those debts. Congress gradually increased the required age of the past due federal loans to be discharged automatically, and then in 2005 put the final nail in the coffin by sweeping up private student loans as well.
In 1996, the Bankruptcy Code prevented the discharge of all “educational . . . loans made, insured or guaranteed by a governmental unit or nonprofit institution.” And so anyone with a student loan that had no connection with the government or a nonprofit institution was, conceivably, home free.
Enter James Corletta, who filed for bankruptcy in 1997 (under his former name of James Pappas) with the hope of, among other things, wiping out a student loan issued by Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board that he’d cosigned for a friend of his.
Corletta, at the time of his bankruptcy filing, owed what he described on his bankruptcy papers as a Hinson-Hazelwood College Access Loan in the amount of $18,193.56 to Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Neither he nor THECB filed any papers with the bankruptcy court regarding the dischargeability of the debt, probably because Corletta figured that it was going to be automatically discharged and THECB figured that it was a debt excepted from discharge.
Fast forward to 2014, when Corletta marches back into bankruptcy court because THECB filed a lawsuit against him for collection.
What happens next shows just how complicated it can be to puzzle out the student loan discharge issue in bankruptcy.
Corletta’s new lawyer (not the same one who filed his bankruptcy case for him) walks into court claiming that the THECB loan doesn’t fit under the definition of having been, “made, insured or guaranteed by a governmental unit or nonprofit institution.”
She also claims that the changes to the bankruptcy laws made in 2005, which limited educational loans to those incurred by a taxpayer for himself, a spouse, or any dependent, somehow applied to Corletta’s case.
Perhaps Corletta’s attorney slept through the part of law school that talked about the application of laws and how they’re not effective until they’re actually signed into law. If she had, perhaps she wouldn’t have made the argument that the 2005 laws somehow applied to a 1997 case.
The next thing that baffles is the apparent confusion the lawyer shows when it comes to the question of whether a student loan is made, insured or guaranteed by a governmental unit.
Corletta’s lawyer spends a lot of time going through the history of the College Access Loan and THECB, but doesn’t seem to read the part of the Bankruptcy Code (§ 101(27) for those of you who are playing along at home) that defines a governmental unit as, “department, agency, or instrumentality of . . . a State.” As the district court judge Robert L. Pitman notes:

The THECB was created by the Texas State Legislature in the Higher Education Coordinating Act of 1965, later codified as Chapter 61 of the Texas Education Code. TEX. EDUC. CODE § 61.021, et seq. Its powers and responsibilities are specifically delineated by the state legislature. TEX. EDUC. CODE § 61.021 (“[The THECB] shall perform only the functions which are enumerated in this chapter and which the legislature may assign to it.”). And it is authorized to issue and sell general obligation bonds of the state of Texas to fund its loan programs. TEX. CONST. art. III, §50b-4–50b-7. At the very least, this establishes that the THECB is an “agency, or instrumentality” of Texas.

Seems like the sort of thing a lawyer would look into when trying to figure out if a student loan was discharged in a client’s bankruptcy.
I wonder whether this is a case of a lawyer operating out of their field of expertise, or a Hail Mary pass borne of a desire to bring the THECB to the bargaining table. I’m hopeful that it was the latter, but I think bringing a case of this sort was a terrible idea because there was virtually no chance of winning.
This is an example of a student loan borrower failing to take action in a timely manner and then being backed into a corner. Corletta filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 1997, then ignored his student loans until 2011 when the lawsuit was filed against him. Rather than taking action when he was served with the complaint, he again took no action and instead say idly by as a judgment was issued against him. Even then, he waited three years before filing his case in bankruptcy court.
Rather than fighting what was clearly a losing battle, Corletta should have sat down with his original bankruptcy lawyer to map out a plan of attack back in 1997. Over the intervening 18 years he could have likely worked out a modest payment plan that would have prevented a lawsuit and, ultimately, a judgment against him.
Instead, he chose to tilt at the proverbial windmill. And in the end, it got him nowhere.
Here’s a copy of the Corletta complaint.
And here’s a copy of the court decision.

The post Texas Court Rules Against Borrower In Student Loan Bankruptcy Discharge Case appeared first on Bankruptcy and Student Loan Lawyers - 866.787.8078.