the Bond Botes Law Offices's blog

As a rule, most tax debts can’t be wiped out in bankruptcy—you’ll continue to owe them at the end of a Chapter 7 bankruptcy case or have to repay them in full in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy repayment plan. However, with any rule, there are always exceptions.

You’ll hear a lot of people impulsively say: “bankruptcy is bad.”

That is because they have not given much thought to it and their response is based on F.E.A.R. – False Evidence Appearing Real.

The last big bankruptcy reform in the United States—the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) that took effect in 2005—was bad for consumers. The law changes, which included the pre-filing credit counseling requirement, the means test for Chapter 7, and an increase in the required wait time between bankruptcies, was largely crafted by consumer lenders.

According to a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) report issued in January of this year, student loan debt has significantly increased among Americans age 60 and older. How much do you ask? Over the last decade, the number of Americans age 60 or older with one or more student loans quadrupled from 700,000 to almost 2.8 million. Not only is that a significant increase, but that also makes them the fastest-growing segment of the market. In dollar figures, the average debt almost doubled from $12,000 to $23,500 with a total owed of $66.7 billion.

by Mary Conner Pool | Oct 4, 2013

The chapter 13 plan is a document prepared by your attorney and filed with the court that outlines how you will repay your debts over the life of your plan. In other words, it is a repayment plan. The chapter 13 plan directs the trustee on how your chapter 13 payments are to be disbursed to the creditors each month and how long you will be in the plan. A chapter 13 plan may look different from one district to another but the essential premise of the document is the same.