Good news and bad news for potential bankruptcy filers

Within the past month there has been good news and bad news for folks thinking of filing a bankruptcy. The good news is that the federal exemptions have gone up as of April 1, 2010. The bad news is that the median income thresholds – which have a lot to do with who qualifies to file a Chapter 7 – have gone down slightly as of March 15th.

I just finished updating my exemptions page and my Chapter 7 page by posting the new numbers if you want to check them out.

The theory of Chapter 7 is that the court appoints a trustee who is given ownership of all your assets, right down to your socks. To get the assets back, you have to be able to claim them as exempt. This means that the list of things you can claim as exempt is very important. Here in Minnesota we get to choose between two very different lists – a list provided by federal law and another list provided by state law. The two lists are quite different, so it can make a big difference which one you choose. In general, the federal list is better unless you have substantial equity in your home. If there’s quite a bit of equity, then you better use the state list.

Trouble is that except for the fact that it is good for protecting one’s home, the state list has lots of gaps. Lots of things fall through the cracks and will go to the trustee. For this reason I pretty much hate the state list, but sometimes I have to use it anyway.

Since October of 2005 anybody who wants to file a Chapter 7 – except for a person who’s debts are “primarily business” – has to either be under the median income or pass a difficult means test. Thus, what those median income numbers are also becomes very important.

I’m relaxed. Really RELAXED.

Or not.

Nothing drives me close to being stark raving mad like a computer problem. It seems as if when that happens, everything else has to stop until the problem is resolved; and really let me tell you, I definitely have other things to do.

Last week my trusty laptop, upon which I have relied several years for a great many things, started giving me the following message when I booted it up: “Disk failure imminent. Back up all data.”

Maybe it was that new defrag program I had tried. Or maybe the laptop is just old. It has served me well four years, maybe almost five. The techno geeks in my life, and I call them that with due respect, all tell me that this is about the useful life of most laptops.

So late last week I went to my friendly local office supply store. The previous Sunday in the Star Tribune I noticed they were having a laptop sale. Yes, from time to time I have been known to still read a newspaper that’s actually printed on paper. Anyhow, at the store I found a wonderful whiz bang HP laptop with a 17 inch screen, Windows 7 and all the trimmings.

I brought it home and went to work configuring it for my personal use. That means I installed Eudora for my email, Word Perfect for my word processing, and an old version of WS-FTP so I can update my web sites when I finally get around to it. There’s a lot of different stuff about Windows 7 that takes a while to figure out, but I really was doing OK.

I enjoyed that laptop for about all of 72 hours until yesterday afternoon, when it seems to have electrocuted itself. First it started turning itself off for no reason. I took that as a warning sign, plugged in my portable hard drive and managed to back up most of my stuff before it breathed it’s final breath. After shutting itself off abruptly several times, it finally refused to boot up at all.

So this morning I tried to return the dead laptop. Fried hard drive was the diagnosis. All they would let me do is trade it for another one. So now I’ve spent my whole morning trying to get another one up and running to my own personal specs. I’m trying to be gentle with it, but I want it the way I want it.

My apologies for not responding to my email for the past day or so. I hope to have that up and running again shortly.

The shoe is on the other foot today

I hate this. Amost more than anything.

I am about to leave the office for my annual trip to seem my accountant to do my taxes.

This means that I have to provide detailed financial info about myself to a third party. I try to be as accurate as possible, but I’m always concerned that I might not get it right.

I ask my clients for info like this all the time. Today I have a better idea of how that feels.

Spam on my blog – so now it’s "moderated"

Talk about nasty stuff! I’ve started getting spam comments all over my blog. I’ve been trying to delete them, but I may have missed a few. My apology for any that I may have missed.

I have enough to do without trying to edit the spam out of my blog. For Pete’s sake, I’m still having trouble getting my calls returned. I guess I’m used to it in my email, but this abuse of my blog challenges my faith in humanity. Who are these people? Don’t they have any self respect? If you ask me, it’s a pretty low thing to do.

So I’ve been fiddling with the blogger.com settings, and I think I’ve figured out how to make this a “moderated” blog. That means that no comments go up on the blog until I approve them. I’d rather not have to bother with that. I sure don’t have time for it. I just want to be left alone so I can practice law.

I would not have known that setting this up as a moderated blog was an option, except that another kind blogger emailed me and suggested it. He was a good man, and I thank him. Guess there’s hope for humanity yet.

Nothing Like a Little Excitement

The Vogager Bank is next door to the building where I office. Looks as if it was just robbed this afternoon.

My client scheduled for 4 pm seems to not have gotten here yet. That could be the traffic; or it could be that the neighborhood is surrounded with police who may be obstructing traffic. I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some road blocks in place. I just was visited by a very polite police officer and his quite pleasant but very focused and very large police dog. No, there wasn’t anyone else in the office with me just now.

Apparently they are looking for two guys, one of whom may be loose in my building.

More on this later.

Best endorsement I could get!

A few days ago I and close family made our annual pilgrimage to the Macy’s Santa land display. I admit that to me it’s still the Dayton’s Christmas display. A sign of the times I guess was that for the first time ever as far as I can remember, they had the same theme for the second year in a row – Day in the Life of an Elf.

As we entered the display area in the 12th floor auditorium, I did see something – well someone actually – that I had never seen there before. It was Mrs. Santa Claus greeting everyone as they entered. Several in my group seemed embarrassed and ignored her, but I had to stop and chat a minute.

“What’s your name?” asked Mrs. Santa.

“Davy” I said. I figured I better use the name I went by when I was a little kid or she wouldn’t know who I was.

“Davy,” she said. “You’re on the NICE list. Such great accomplishments!”

Well, that was good to know.

So now that I know that I’m officially NICE, let me wish you-all a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy Hanukkah – and happy Whateverelseyoumaycelebrate!

Better ignore the map on my directions page for now.

It’s been brought to my attention that the embedded Google map on my directions page at my web site shows my office as being on the north side of I-394, when in fact it is on the south side. I swear when I set that up a few months back it was working correctly.

So now I have to find time to fix that. It may yet be a few days. I do my web sites with the 2007 edition of Microsoft Expression Web. So far when I have tired to embed a Mapquest map to replace the Google one, the program goes berserk. I’ll fix that soon, even if it means buying a newer version of the program.

Meanwhile I notice that some one’s been posting spam comments after some of my entries here. I’m going to delete every one of them that I’m aware of right now. Another despicable practice. Doesn’t anybody have any self-respect anymore?

Two days behind in my email; please be patient with me.

Well, that trip to Tucson was wonderful. Whatever tan I may have acquired is just about gone already, sad to say. And if the economy is getting any better, there’s sure no sign of it in my office. I am crazy busy. It took me until the end of the day on Thursday to return my calls up to what I had received by Tuesday; and right now – end of the day on Friday – I am still going through emails from Wednesday.

I am returning my calls and I am responding to my emails, but please be patient with me. I am doing my best to actually respond to everyone – eventually.

Loons at Westwood Hills

I spent time at the office this past Saturday, but not after first taking a long walk at the Westwood Hills Nature Center in St. Louis Park. It was quite beautiful, with the maples already turning a bright red.

There’s a part of the trail that goes over a board walk which extends right through part of the lake. On that section of the trail I noticed out in the middle of the lake some birds that I must say look like loons to me. I have seen them there in prior years, always in the spring or the fall. They seem to make Westwood Lake one of their stops as they migrate either north in the spring or south in the fall. I guess they are already on their way south.

For me there seems to be something uplifting and reassuring about seeing them.

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