Law Commons^™

Portraits Of Bankruptcy Filers, Pamela Foohey, Robert M. Lawless, Deborah Thorne

Faculty Articles

One in ten adult Americans has turned to the consumer bankruptcy system for help. For almost forty years, the only systematic data collection about the people who file bankruptcy has come from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project (CBP), for which we serve as co-principal investigators. In this Article, we use CBP data from 2013 to 2019 to describe who is using the bankruptcy system, providing the first comprehensive overview of bankruptcy filers in thirty years. We use principal component analysis to leverage these data to identify distinct groups of people who file bankruptcy. This technique allows us to situate the distinctions …

Portraits Of Bankruptcy Filers, Pamela Foohey, Robert M. Lawless, Deborah Thorne

Scholarly Works

One in ten adult Americans have turned to the consumer bankruptcy system for help. For the past almost forty years, the only systematic data collection about the people who file bankruptcy comes from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project (CBP), for which we serve as co-principal investigators. In this Article, we use CBP data from 2013 to 2019 to describe who is using the bankruptcy system, providing the first comprehensive overview of bankruptcy filers in thirty years. We use principal component analysis to leverage these data to identify distinct groups of people who file bankruptcy. This technique allows us to situate the …

Steering Loan Modifications Post-Pandemic, Pamela Foohey, Dalie Jimenez, Christopher K. Odinet

Scholarly Works

As part of federal and state relief programs created during the COVID-19 pandemic, many American households received pauses on their largest debts, particularly on mortgages and student loans. Others may have come to agreements with their lenders, likewise pausing or altering payment on other debts, such as auto loans and credit cards. This relief allowed households to allocate their savings and income to necessary expenses, like groceries, utilities, and medicine. But forbearance does not equal forgiveness. At the end of the various relief periods and moratoria, people will have to resume paying all their debts, the amounts of which may …

Consumer Bankruptcy Should Be Increasingly Irrelevant--Why Isn't It?, Pamela Foohey

Scholarly Works

This symposium piece is a response to Professor Nathalie Martin's Bringing Relevance Back to Consumer Bankruptcy. This response overviews the place consumer bankruptcy presently occupies in the United States. In doing so, it details why consumer bankruptcy remains relevant in the face of a socio-economic structure and of laws that suggest that bankruptcy may not be a particularly useful place for struggling Americans to turn to for help. The response ends by calling for a bolder vision for consumer bankruptcy in light of the shifting place of the bankruptcy system in America’s increasingly thread-bare social safety net.

Driven To Bankruptcy, Pamela Foohey, Robert M. Lawless, Deborah Thorne

Scholarly Works

Over the last ten years, 15.1 million people filed for bankruptcy owning 16.4 million cars. These cars provided access to work, education, medical care, childcare, food, and other life necessities. They also were major household investments, the most expensive asset most bankruptcy filers owned other than a house. Using original data from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, we document what happens to car owners and their car loans when they enter bankruptcy. In brief, we find that people who file bankruptcy own automobiles at the same rate as the general population, and that they overwhelmingly indicate that they want to use …

The Debt Collection Pandemic, Pamela Foohey, Dalie Jimenez, Christopher K. Odinet

Scholarly Works

As of May 2020, the United States' reaction to the unique and alarming threat of COVID-19 has partially succeeded in slowing the virus’s spread. Saving people’s lives, however, came at a severe economic cost. Americans’ economic anxiety understandably spiked. In addition to worrying about meeting basic expenses, people’s anxieties about money necessarily included what might happen if they could not cover already outstanding debts. The nearly 70 million Americans with debts already in collection faced heightened anxiety about their inability to pay.

The coronavirus pandemic is set to metastasize into a debt collection pandemic. The federal government can and should …

Life In The Sweatbox, Pamela Foohey, Robert M. Lawless, Katherine Porter, Deborah Thorne

Scholarly Works

The time before a person files bankruptcy is sometimes called the financial “sweatbox.” Using original data from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, we find that people are living longer in the sweatbox before filing bankruptcy than they have in the past. We also describe the depletion of wealth and well-being that defines people’s time in the sweatbox. For those people who struggle for more than two years before filing bankruptcy — the “long strugglers” — their time in the sweatbox is particularly damaging. During their years in the sweatbox, long strugglers deal with persistent collection calls, go without healthcare, food, and …

Access To Consumer Bankruptcy, Pamela Foohey

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This essay examines the state of access to justice in the context of consumer bankruptcy from two vantage points: (1) how people decide that their money problems are legal problems addressable by filing bankruptcy; and (2) the barriers people face in using the consumer bankruptcy system. To shed new light on how people decide to use bankruptcy to address their financial troubles, I analyze a sample of narratives accompanying consumers' complaints about financial products and services submitted to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I also chronicle the evolution of research regarding consumer bankruptcy’s “local legal culture,” systemic racial bias, and …

Debt Collection ‘Versus’ Consumer Protection: The Fdcpa’S Prohibition On False Representations Of The Legal Status Of Debt, Sara Brenner

Bankruptcy Research Library

(Excerpt)

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”), 15 U.S.C. § 1692, has dramatically changed the landscape of debt collection for both consumers and debt collectors. Prior to the enactment of the FDCPA, state common law governed informal debt collection, and abusive collection practices were pervasive. Debt collectors were incentivized to engage in abusive collection tactics and consumers had little recourse. As a result, the FDCPA was enacted in order to regulate consumer debt collection and to remedy abuse. The express purpose of the FDCPA is to “protect consumers against debt collection abuses” and to ensure that debt collectors who …

Critique Of Money Judgment Part Three: Restraining Notices, David G. Carlson

Faculty Articles

New York is virtually unique in permitting lawyers to issue court orders restraining debtors and third parties from conveying away any assets that could be used to satisfy a money judgment. In effect, these orders command the recipient to do nothing, whereas a turnover or garnishment orders the recipient to do something — pay the creditor or sheriff or surrender illiquid property to the sheriff. The weakness and strength of this debt collection tool is assessed at length. The Article also analyzes in detail New York’s Exempt Income Protection Act, enacted in 2008 to force banks to protect the exempt …

Bankruptcy-Based Discrimination, Douglass G. Boshkoff

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.