Category: BAPCPA

I find myself looking at a 32 page report, complete with colorful graphs and charts, written by a gentleman by the name of Michael Simkovic. Mr. Simkovic was a fellow in law and economics at Harvard Law School between 2006 and 2007. He published this report last July. His subject is the effect of the 2005 “Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act.” Many of us call that BAPCPA (pronounced “bapceepa“).

The report begins by reminding us that supporters had claimed that ultimately this law would benefit consumers, because it would lower the cost of credit card debt. The data shows, however, that while credit card company losses decreased, and the card companies had record profits, costs to consumers actually increased. “In other words,” says Mr. Simkovic, “the 2005 bankruptcy reform profited credit card companies at consumers’ expense.”

No big surprise there. But thanks to Mr. Simkovic for laying out the details and proving it beyond a reasonable doubt. This seems to be very consistent with a series of articles published in the Star Tribune last October which stated, among other things, that BAPCPA has been one of the contributors to our current economic meltdown.

One of the things Congress did before going home was pass the “National Guard and Reservists Debt Relief Act.” I haven’t heard if the President has signed it, but it seems to me he must. This law would exempt certain members of the armed forces from the means test if a bankruptcy petition is filed within 540 days after they complete active duty. I would hope that the same rule would apply WHILE they are on active duty.

I’m glad to see this law being passed. However, I doubt it has much real effect because almost all of these folks would qualify for bankruptcy anyway.

My email today brought me a notice that the U.S. Trustee’s office is resuming debtor audits as of today. They stopped in January because Congress didn’t fund it.

An audit in this context involves the U.S. Trustee’s office hiring an outside accounting firm to go over the debtor’s records. Previously the policy was that one in 250 cases would randomly be audited. Now the policy is one in a thousand will be audited. That’s a 400% improvement, but I’m still sad to see this stuff starting again.

Here’s another clip in the series that I have been working on. In this one I talk about how the Senate has eliminated a section of the pending mortgage relief legislation which would have allowed a bankruptcy judge to reduce the balance owing on a mortgage. The idea was that in those situations where the mortgage is more than the value of the property, the bankruptcy judge could reduce the balance of the mortgage to be equal to the value of the house. The rest of the balance of the mortgage would be discharged in the bankruptcy. Sounds like a wonderful idea to me. But the Senate committee didn’t think so. Too much lobbying by the banking industry.

So for the time being there is no provision in the bankruptcy law for an option to discharge the part of the mortgage that exceeds the value of the house, while allowing the balance of the mortgage to be a lien on the house. I feel as if I may be doing a bad job at explaining this. It’s the kind of thing that many non-lawyers might not understand. As a result, the Senate gets away with not passing a really beneficial piece of legislation, because nobody quite understands what it is they didn’t pass.