Tag Archives: Chapter 7

Why Bankruptcy Means Test Timing Is Critical

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Waiting just one day to file your Chapter 7 bankruptcy case can make qualifying for it much easier—or much harder!

How could a small delay make such a big difference?

One of the goals behind the change in bankruptcy law in 2005 was to force more people to pay a portion of their debts through Chapter 13 payment plans instead of writing them off in Chapter 7 “straight bankruptcy.” And the primary tool for this is the means test. The rationale behind the means test was to have a financial test that would find out who had the “means” to pay something to their creditors in Chapter 13.

But rules can have unintended consequences. An experienced lawyer will work to turn these consequences to your advantage.

Why bankruptcy means test timing is critical

The means test compares the income you received during the six FULL CALENDAR months before filing bankruptcy to the median income for your state and family size. If your income is at or under the median income, then you can file a Chapter 7 (except in unusual circumstances, which I’m not going to get into here). If your income is higher than the median, you may be able to file a Chapter 7, but you have to jump through hoops to do so. And there’s a risk that you will be forced to go through a Chapter 13 payment plan.  Having income below the median income amount makes your case less risky.

But how can filing the case a day earlier or later matter so much? Because of the means test’s fixation on those six full calendar months. And because the means test includes ALL income during that period (other than Social Security).  All of the money that comes into your hands during that period is counted, not just taxable income.

Imagine that you received a chunk of money, say a tax refund, a few catch-up child support payments, or an insurance settlement or reimbursement.  Not a huge amount, say $3,000, received on July 15 of last year. Your only other income is from your job, where make a $42,000 salary, or $3,500 gross per month. Let’s say that the median annual income for your state and family size is $43,000 (this is just an example – the median income for New Jersey is much higher, thank goodness).

Now we’re getting close to the end of January, your Chapter 7 bankruptcy paperwork is ready to file, and you’re anxious to get it filed. BUT, if your case is filed on or before January 31, then the last six full calendar month period will be from July 1 through December 31 of last year, which includes that $3,000 you received in mid-July. Your work income of 6 times $3,500 equals $21,000, plus that $3,000 totals $24,000 received during that 6-month period. Multiply that by 2 to make that an annual amount, and that equals $48,000, higher than the $42,000 median income. So you’d have failed the income portion of the means test.

But if you just wait to file until February 1, the applicable 6-month period jumps forward by 1 month to the period from August 1 of last year through January 31 of this year. That new period does NOT include the $3,000 you received in mid-July. Now your income during the 6-month period is $21,000, multiplied by 2 is $42,000. You would be under the $43,000 median income. You’ve passed the income portion of the means test, and you can skip the awkward and risky expenses part of the means test. You’re more likely to breeze through your Chapter 7 case.

Last thing: what if that $3,000 was not received almost 6 months ago, but rather 2 or 3 months ago, and you’re desperate to file your case? You need to stop a garnishment or foreclosure and you can’t wait another few months to file. If you file now, you will be over the median income, and you will need to do the expenses part of the means test. You may be OK there. But careful pre-bankruptcy planning is critical. The sooner we start, the more likely time will be on your side.

How To Keep Your Car in a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy

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Chapter 7 bankruptcy gives you a couple of options for your car when you’re still paying on it. Basically, you can either keep paying or you can surrender (i.e., give back) the vehicle.

What’s The Situation?

This is about a vehicle that you still owe on, where your finance company is the lienholder on your vehicle title, and where there’s no more equity (value beyond the debt) than is covered by your available exemptions. In other words, this is not a vehicle that your Chapter 7 trustee is going to be interested in, either because it has no equity (e.g., it’s worth less than the debt against it) or because the equity is small enough to be protected by the exemption. The following options also apply to car leases.

Ch. 7 Options For Your Car

Even if the bankruptcy trustee doesn’t want your car, your car finance company might. But if you need to keep the car, especially for work, there is a certain path that you need to follow.

How To Keep Your Car in a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy

  1. First, if you don’t want to keep your vehicle, you can surrender it to the creditor after your bankruptcy is filed. (Or you can surrender it before you file, but that gets risky—be sure you have talked to your bankruptcy attorney and have a clear game plan beforehand.) If you give back your vehicle without bankruptcy, you’ll owe and you might be sued for the “deficiency balance”—the amount you would owe after your vehicle is sold, its sale price is credited to your account, and all the repo and other costs are added. (The deficiency balance you’ll owe can be crazy high.) But bankruptcy will write off (i.e., discharge) the deficiency balance.
  2. If you want to keep your car through a Ch. 7, you have to be current on your loan. In other words, make your car payments during bankruptcy. So if you aren’t current, you’ll need to quickly get current and stay there. Some lenders will allow you to be a month or so behind on your loan, but I’ve found that when a bankruptcy has been filed, they suddenly change their tune and they want to you be current on your payments. Depending on the lender, you might need to sign a reaffirmation agreeing to legally exclude the vehicle loan from the bankruptcy discharge, but most lenders don’t work that way. I generally don’t recommend a reaffirmation agreement except under certain narrow circumstances. You should discuss this issue with an experienced bankruptcy attorney before your bankruptcy is filed.

The Takeaway

In general, “straight bankruptcy”—Chapter 7—can be the best way to go if your vehicle situation is pretty straightforward: you either want to give back your car, or you want to keep the car and you’re current on the loan or can quickly get current.

If you have questions about how to keep your car in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy  – or about how to get rid of it – schedule an appointment with Bankruptcy Attorney Jennifer N. Weil, Esq. by calling 201-676-0722. Or you can schedule your own appointment online at my Setmore page.

 

Writing Off Income Taxes Forever through Bankruptcy

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Writing off income taxes forever through bankruptcy

Writing off income taxes forever through bankruptcy? Yes, it’s possible. What income taxes can a Chapter 7 bankruptcy completely write off?

It takes meeting at least four criteria.

But before I list and describe these, I have to emphasize that this whole area—dealing with tax debts in bankruptcy—is a very complex one. I present the information in these blogs to you because the more you know the better. But part of being informed is knowing when you definitely need an attorney’s help. So, part of my job is to make very clear when you are in a particularly difficult area, when you truly need the help of someone who spends his or her professional life thoroughly understanding the complex rules, and constantly applying them in the real world. This is clearly one of those areas.

And now on to those four minimum criteria for writing off income taxes in bankruptcy:

1. Has three years passed since the tax return was due?

This one is pretty straightforward, because every income tax debt has a due date for the filing of its tax return. The important twist here: if you requested an extension of time—usually from April 15 to October 15—the three-year period does not begin until the extended due date.

2. Has two years passed since the applicable tax return was actually filed?

It does not matter how ancient the tax is if at least two years have not passed since the return was in fact filed. And a “substitute for return”—the common procedure in which the IRS in effect prepares a tax return on your behalf based on the (usually incomplete) information it has available—that doesn’t count as a filed return for this purpose.

3. Has 240 days passed since the assessment of the tax?

In most situations, an income tax is assessed within a few weeks after you file it. Assessment is the tax authority’s formal determination of your tax liability, usually through its review and acceptance of your tax return. But sometimes the amount of tax is in dispute because of a tax audit or litigation about the amount. By the time the accurate tax amount is finally assessed, the above three-year or two-year time periods may have passed, but that tax cannot be written off unless that bankruptcy case is filed more than 240 days after the assessment. This 240-day period is also put on hold while a taxpayer’s “offer in compromise” is pending. Just like it sounds, that’s an offer to the IRS to settle the tax for less money or for specific payment terms.

4. Have you filed a fraudulent tax return or intentionally attempted to evade the tax?

Even if all the required time periods have passed, if you were dishonest on your tax return—such as not including some of your income or claiming invalid deductions–or tried to avoid paying a tax in some other way, that tax will not be written off in bankruptcy.

This discussion should give you a good idea of whether any or all of your income tax debts can be written off in bankruptcy. And in some cases applying these four conditions will give you an accurate answer. But there are some other considerations that can come into play. What if the IRS recorded a tax lien against your home and on your personal possessions?  How would a prior bankruptcy affect these timing rules? What about your appeal of a tax? What’s considered an honest mistake on a tax return instead of intentional tax evasion? When can the taxing authority add a 30-day “tack-on” to the 240-day rule?

Bankruptcy can certainly write off income taxes under the right circumstances, but you need to have an experienced attorney review your personal situation to see if you truly meet those circumstances.

If you need a New Jersey bankruptcy attorney to help determine whether your income tax debt is dischargeable in bankruptcy, schedule a telephone consultation with attorney Jennifer Weil online at this Setmore page, or by calling (201) 676-0722.

Photo by StockMonkeys.com.

THE Goal of Bankruptcy: Discharge of Your Debts

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5708755837_b5af43415d_zMost, but not all, debts are written off, or “discharged,” in a bankruptcy case. Is there a simple way to know what will and what will not be discharged in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy?

No, not really.

I can give you a list of the categories of debts that can’t, or might not, be discharged, but some of those categories don’t have clear boundaries, and some depend on whether a creditor is going to challenge the discharge and how a judge might rule.

But why can’t it be simple? Here’s what you need to know:

1)  All debts are discharged, EXCEPT for those that fit within an exception.

2)  There ARE a lot of exceptions, BUT if you tell your attorney everything, you are likely to discover whether you have any debts that may not be discharged. Surprises are rare.

3)  Some debts are never discharged, NO MATTER WHAT: for example, child or spousal support, criminal fines and fees, and withholding taxes.

4)  Some debts are never discharged, but THAT’S ONLY IF the particular debt fits certain conditions: for example, income taxes, depending on conditions like how long ago the taxes were due and when the tax return was filed; and student loans, as long as conditions of “undue hardship” are not met.

5) Some debts are discharged, UNLESS timely challenged by the creditor and resulting in a ruling by the judge that the debt meets certain conditions involving fraud, misrepresentation, larceny, embezzlement, or intentional injury to person or property.

6)  A few debts (used to be many more) can’t be discharged in Chapter 7, BUT can be in Chapter 13: for example, divorce debts other than support.

The bad news: as simple as I would like to make it, determining what debts aren’t dischargeable isn’t simple. But there’s more good news than bad. First, for many people all the debts they want to discharge WILL be discharged. Second, an experienced bankruptcy attorney can predict which of your debts will be discharged. And third, if you have troublesome nondischargeable debts, Chapter 13 can be a decent way to keep those under control.

If you are in New Jersey and looking into bankruptcy, call Jennifer Weil now to schedule a consultation: (201) 676-0722.

 

Photo credit: Jason Meredith

Can you keep all of your stuff in bankruptcy?

Can you really keep everything you own all the way through bankruptcy?  You can usually keep items that you own outright (on which you do not owe any money) and you can usually keep those items on which you are making payments to a creditor (like your home or car), IF you can meet certain conditions. Most people who file for Ch. 7 bankruptcy can keep what they own because of laws known as “exemptions.”

Most people know that a they can get a discharge of debts in exchange for liquidating their assets – in other words, selling off your stuff.  BUT, don’t forget that you can keep whatever that the law protects. And MOST of the time, the law protects ALL of your stuff! So most people who file a Chapter 7 get a bankruptcy discharge without forking over any of their stuff.

“Exemptions” are listings of the types of stuff that the law protects from your creditors – these listings generally are found in statutes and they are generally limited by certain dollar amounts.  Exempt items are protected from the Chapter 7 trustee, who acts for the benefit of your creditors.

Exemptions can be complicated.  The Bankruptcy Code contains a set of federal exemptions and each state also has its own listings.  Some states, such as New Jersey, give you the choice to use either the federal or the state exemptions.  Other states only allow you to use the exemptions provided under state law.  If you have moved from another state fairly recently, you may have to use the exemption rules of your prior state.  Because each state’s rules can differ from one another, quite a bit of money might be at issue, depending on what day your bankruptcy is filed.

Once you know which set of exemptions you are going to use, it may not be crystal clear whether all of your stuff is protected. So deciding whether an item is exempt – protected – is often more complicated than scanning a list of exemptions and fitting all your assets in.  And what if you own one or more items that don’t fit any of the listed exemptions? Can the items be protected? These are all issues that you should discuss with a bankruptcy attorney before making any major decisions about your stuff.

Call (201) 676-0722 for a free New Jersey bankruptcy consultation.

Are you eligible for Ch. 7 or Ch. 13 bankruptcy?

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Eligibility for Ch. 7 or Ch. 13 bankruptcy can turn on who is filing the bankruptcy, the type and amount of debt, the amount of income, and the amount of expenses.

Who is filing the bankruptcy:

Only a human being (or a human being and his or her spouse) can file a Chapter 13 case. Neither a partnership nor a corporation can file a Chapter 13 case, but it can file a Chapter 7, whether or not the business owner also files one individually.

The type and amount of debt:

If your debt is primarily consumer debt (a dollar amount of more than 50%), then you have to pass the means test to qualify for a Chapter 7. Under Chapter 7, there is no restriction on the amount of debt you can have in order to qualify. But, Chapter 13 is restricted to cases where the person filing has a maximum of $383,175 in total unsecured debt and $1,149,525 in total secured debt.

Amount of income:

If your income is no more than the median income for your family size and state, then you can easily pass the means test to qualify for a Ch. 7. Chapter 13 requires regular income, which the Bankruptcy Code defines as income that is “sufficiently stable and regular” to enable you to “make payments under a [Chapter 13] plan.” This makes sense because you will be making regular monthly payments for the duration of your Ch. 13 case. A Ch. 13 case will last three years if the income is less than the median income applicable to your family size and state; if the income is at the applicable median income amount or more, the Ch. 13 case will last five years.

The amount of expenses:

In Ch. 7, if your income is not below the median for your state, then you must complete a highly technical test involving some, but not necessarily all, of your expenses to see whether you pass the means test and thus whether you are eligible for a Ch. 7. In Ch. 13, a similar, but often more complicated, calculation largely determines the amount you must pay monthly into your plan to satisfy the requirements of Ch. 13.

Choosing between Ch. 7 and 13 can be simple. But there are at least a dozen major differences among them, differences of which you may not be aware. So when you come in to see me or another attorney, be clear about your goals but also be open-minded about how to reach them. You may well have tools available that you didn’t know about.

For bankruptcy in Northern New Jersey, call: (201) 676-0722 or schedule a consultation at my Setmore page.

Business debt can allow you to qualify for Ch. 7

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If you owe more business/non-consumer debt than consumer debt, then you avoid not only the “means test” but also some other roadblocks to a successful post-business Chapter 7 bankruptcy case.

What’s the “Means Test” and Why Does It Matter?

Bankruptcy law says that if your income is more than a certain amount, you have to pass a means test to be able to go through a Chapter 7 case successfully. One way to avoid this means test is by having less income than the permitted median family income for the state in which you live. But the median family income amounts are relatively low. If your income is above the applicable median amount, you have to go through the entire means test at the risk of being forced into a 3-to-5-year Chapter 13 payment plan instead of a three-month Chapter 7 liquidation.

Debtors with More Non-Consumer Debts than Consumer Debts

You can skip the means test altogether if your debts are not primarily consumer debts. This way you could be eligible for a Chapter 7 case even if your income is above the median level. Indeed, you avoid other kinds of “presumptions of abuse” as well, not just the formulaic means test, but also the broader “totality of circumstances” challenges. Congress decided that if most of your debts are from a failed business venture, you should be allowed a fresh start through Chapter 7, regardless of your current income and expenses.

What is a “Consumer Debt”?

The Bankruptcy Code defines a “consumer debt” as one “incurred by an individual primarily for a personal, family, or household purpose.”

The focus is on the reason why you incurred the debt. If you made a credit purchase or took out the loan for your business, then it may not be a “consumer debt.” That is a factual question that must be decided separately for each one of your debts.

“Primarily Consumer Debts”?

The Bankruptcy Code does not make this crystal clear, but generally, if the total amount of consumer debt is less than the total amount of non-consumer debts, your debts are not primarily consumer debts. And then you do not have to mess with the means test.

Seemingly Consumer Debts May Not Be

Small business owners often finance the start-up and operation of their businesses with what would otherwise appear to be consumer credit—credit cards, home equity lines of credit and such. These may qualify as non-consumer debts in calculating whether you have primarily consumer debts. Your use of various forms of personal credit to fund your business is something to discuss with your attorney.

Unexpectedly High Business Debts Can Help

Sometimes business owners end up with business debts larger than they thought they would have when their business closed. For example, if you had to break a commercial lease when you closed your business, the unpaid lease payments you owe could be huge. Or your business closure may have left you with other unexpected debts, such as obligations to business partners or litigation resulting in damages owed. The good side of larger-than-expected business debts is that they may allow you to skip the means test and other grounds for dismissal or conversion to Chapter 13, allowing you to discharge your debts through Chapter 7.

For bankruptcy in Northern New Jersey, call: (201) 676-0722.

What happens to general unsecured debt in Chapter 7?

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Examples of general unsecured debts include credit card debt and medical debt.  If you are thinking about filing for bankruptcy, you should know how these general unsecured debts are handled.

Secured debt usually is tied to your most important possessions, such as your home or your car. So it’s understandable that being able to keep these types of collateral will drive your bankruptcy decisions.  Likewise, your “priority” debts tend to involve your most aggressive creditors and often can’t be discharged in bankruptcy, so these also grab our attention. But it’s more likely that you owe more in general unsecured debt than in secured and priority debts combined.

What happens to general unsecured debt in a Chapter 7? It depends on 2 things: 1) “dischargeability,” and 2) asset distribution.

Dischargeability

Dischargeability refers to whether you are able to get a discharge of that debt in bankruptcy. The dischargeability of most general unsecured debt is not challenged. In the rare case that your discharge of general unsecured debt is challenged, you may have to pay back some or all of that particular debt. But this would depend on whether the creditor is able to show that the debt fits within some narrow grounds for non-dischargeability, such as fraud, misrepresentation, or other similar bad behavior on your part.

Asset Distribution

If everything you own is exempt, or protected, then your Chapter 7 trustee will not take any of it from you – this is called a “no asset” case. But if you have an “asset case,” where the trustee takes some of your assets for distribution to your creditors, your general unsecured creditors will not necessarily receive any of those assets. The trustee must first pay off any priority debts and must pay the trustee’s own fees and that of any other professionals who were hired. Only if any funds remain will the unsecured creditors get to share in the leftovers.

To summarize, in most Chapter 7 cases your general unsecured debts will be discharged, preventing those creditors from ever being able to pursue you for them. Also, these creditors will receive nothing from you, so long as all your assets are exempt. Relatively rarely, a creditor may challenge the discharge of its debt. And if you have an asset case, the trustee may pay a part or—very rarely—all of the “general unsecured debts,” but only if the priority debts and trustee fees do not exhaust all the funds being distributed.

 

Do you really need Ch. 13 to save your home?

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When does filing a Chapter 7 bankruptcy case help enough so that you don’t need a 3-to-5-year Chapter 13 case?

If you are behind on your mortgage payments but want to keep your home, you have likely heard that a Chapter 13 “payment plan” is what you need. And that IS a powerful package, with an impressive set of tools to deal with a wide variety of home-related problems—everything from the mortgages themselves to property taxes, income tax liens, and judgment liens.

But what if you need to discharge other debts to get a fresh start and you have managed to fall only a couple of months behind on your mortgage? Or what if you are not keeping the house, but just need a little more time to find another place to live?

Then you might not need a Chapter 13 case – you may be able to avoid the disadvantages it comes with. Some of these disadvantages are that it takes so much longer and generally costs more than Chapter 7. The extra time and cost can be well worthwhile when you need the great advantages of Chapter 13, but let’s look at ways that Chapter 7 can do enough for your home:

In a Chapter 7 case:

1. The “automatic stay”—the bankruptcy provision that stops virtually all actions by creditors against you or your property—applies to Chapter 7 just as it does to Chapter 13. So the filing of a Chapter 7 case STOPS a foreclosure in its tracks, just as quickly as a Chapter 13 filing. But if you are just trying to buy time to save money to rent an apartment, the tough question is HOW LONG that break in the mortgage company’s foreclosure efforts will last, and how much extra time it’ll buy you. An aggressive creditor could quickly ask the court for “relief from the stay”—permission to resume the foreclosure process—thus potentially getting you only a few extra weeks. Or in the other extreme, a mortgage creditor could just do nothing for the 3 months or so until your Chapter 7 case runs its course and the “automatic stay” expires with the completion of your case. So, Chapter 7 often does not come with much predictability about how much time you’d gain. On the other hand, your bankruptcy attorney may have experience in how fast certain mortgage lenders tend to ask for “relief from stay” under facts similar to yours.

2. Chapter 7 stops—at least briefly—not only mortgage foreclosures, but also prevents other potential liens from being placed against your house, including the IRS’s tax liens and judgment liens. But why would the few weeks or months that Chapter 7 gains make any difference with these kinds of creditors? In the right set of facts, it can make many thousands of dollars of difference.

• A timely filing of a Chapter 7 case can prevent you from having to pay a debt that would otherwise have become a lien against your house. For example, let’s say you have an older IRS debt that meets the necessary conditions for discharge, and you also have a little equity in your home but not more than your homestead exemption allows. If you waited until after the IRS recorded a tax lien for that debt against your house, that lien would continue being attached to your house even if you filed a bankruptcy and would eventually have to be paid. However, if your Chapter 7 filing happened before the IRS recorded a tax lien, the “automatic stay” would prevent that tax lien from being filed and the debt would be discharged.

• Or if instead let’s say you have a debt that is NOT going to be discharged in bankruptcy—say a more recent tax debt—but you also had some assets that you were going to have to surrender to the Chapter 7 trustee, what we call an “asset case.” If again you filed the bankruptcy case before the recording of the tax lien, your Chapter 7 trustee could well pay those taxes as a “priority” debt in front of any of your other debts, potentially leaving you with no tax debt at the completion of your case.

3. Chapter 7 allows you to concentrate on your house payments by getting rid of your other debts. If you’ve managed to keep current on those mortgage payments, but don’t know how long you will be able to do so, the relief you get from discharging your other debts improves your odds of staying current on your home long term. Or if you have missed only a few mortgage payments, AND can reliably make future ones, PLUS enough to catch up on your arrearage within year or less, then Chapter 7 would likely do enough for you. Most mortgage creditors will let you enter into an agreement –often called a “forbearance agreement”—to catch up the missed payments by paying a sufficient specific amount extra each month until you’re caught up, again, as long as that period of catch-up time is relatively short. Otherwise, you may well need a Chapter 13.

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Woman with Autism Gets Student Loans Discharged

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I wrote a post for the blog of fellow New Jersey attorney Matthew Stoloff, who represents clients in the areas of disability rights and special education rights.  That post appears on Mr. Stoloff’s blog here.  You can also read the full text of my post right as follows:

In the past, I have mentioned the difficulty of getting student loans discharged in bankruptcy. But I have yet to discuss why it is so difficult to get a bankruptcy court to discharge student loans.

In this post, I’ll examine the process through a recent case from Maryland where student loans were actually discharged in a bankruptcy and discuss why that case might be anomalous.

In a nutshell, the Bankruptcy Code states that student loans are not dischargeable unless the debtor can show that repayment of the debt will cause an “undue hardship” on the debtor and his or her dependents. The famous Brunner case set the test followed in most of the country, including New Jersey, for what constitutes an “undue hardship”:

1. Whether the debtor will be unable to maintain a minimal standard of living, based on current income and expenses, if forced to repay the student loans;

2. Whether additional circumstances exist indicating that this state of affairs is likely to persist for a significant part of the repayment period for the student loans; and

3. Whether the debtor has made a good faith effort to repay the student loans.

Pa. Higher Educ. Assistance Agency v. Faish (In re Faish), 72 F.3d 298, 304-305 (3d Cir. 1995) (quoting In re Brunner, 831 F.2d at 396 (2nd Cir. 1987)).

In case you are thinking to yourself, “It’s an undue hardship for me to pay my student loans,” pause to consider the bankruptcy case, In re Brightful. There, Ms. Brightful filed for bankruptcy, asking the court to discharge her student loans. The bankruptcy court found that she had “glaring psychiatric problems” and was “emotionally unstable” to the point that she had attempted suicide twice. The court said she could not maintain a “minimal” standard of living and still pay her student loans.

But this was not enough – the court found that, under the Brunner case, Ms. Brightful must prove “a total incapacity…in the future to pay [her] debts for reasons not within [her] control.” So, the current inability to pay student loans is notthe standard. Instead, a discharge of student loans must be based on “the certainty of hopelessness… [emphasis added].”

Recently, a Maryland court considered whether a person on the autism spectrum could get her student loans discharged. See In re Todd. The debtor, Carol Todd, has a form of autism calledAsperger’s Syndrome, in addition to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and osteoporosis. Ms. Todd had a total of about $340,000 in student loan debt and sought to get these loans discharged.

Right away, we know this case is different because the judge quotes the Webster’s dictionary definitions of “undue” and “hardship,” adding that these terms do not suggest a standard that “no debtor can ever meet.” The court went on to describe how Ms. Todd was unable to function normally due to her diagnoses of Asperger’s, PTSD, and osteoporosis – but the court focused primarily on Asperger’s.

Despite her inability to function normally, Ms. Todd obtained 5 different higher education degrees and attended 5 different colleges, plus one online college. The court, however, was influenced by Ms. Todd’s belief that she did not earn her degrees, but that they were “negotiated” for her by the Department of Education, which she said helped her to obtain accommodations. In fact, the court questioned the academic rigor of the programs that she attended.

Following graduation, Ms. Todd worked as an adjunct professor teaching classes for several years, but she was not employed after that time.

In its analysis, the court determined that Ms. Todd’s situation met the “certainty of hopelessness” test due primarily to her autism/Asperger’s. Persuading the court was a doctor’s testimony showing that Ms. Todd could be a successful student, even be able to earn a Ph.D., but that she could not be a “productive” employee in the working world as we know it. In the court’s own words:

… Autism – or Asperger’s – is a permanent condition that will not permit [Ms. Todd] to function “normally” in almost any sense of the word. Because of Autism Ms. Todd has not been able, for the vast majority of her life, to gain or hold a job, let alone fashion a career, and there is no chance that state of affairs will ever change.

Reading the opinion I got the feeling that if only some basic supports were available to disabled, working adults, Carol Todd might have lost her student loan discharge case. But the court was convinced of Ms. Todd’s inability to successfully hold employment, mainly because of her autism, which, ironically, is the same condition that gave her the ability to focus on topics of interest for long enough to help her earn 5 college degrees.

Most bankruptcy student loan discharge cases are like the first case, In re Brightful – the courts apply a harsh standard to the most difficult of circumstances, usually determining that the student loans in question are not dischargeable.

But Carol Todd’s case is an outlier because the judge was willing to focus on the long-term disabling aspects of autism/Asperger’s while at the same time discounting the debtor’s obvious abilities (a metaphor for how our working world as a whole often treats disabled adults).

Will other bankruptcy courts follow the judge’s lead in In re Todd? Is it possible that in the future more people with disabilities who are unable to successfully hold employment will be able to get their student loans discharged more easily? Only time will tell.

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