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Full-Text Articles in Bankruptcy Law
Portraits Of Bankruptcy Filers, Pamela Foohey, Robert M. Lawless, Deborah Thorne
Portraits Of Bankruptcy Filers, Pamela Foohey, Robert M. Lawless, Deborah Thorne
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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
Steering Loan Modifications Post-Pandemic, Pamela Foohey, Dalie Jimenez, Christopher K. Odinet
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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 …
Driven To Bankruptcy, Pamela Foohey, Robert M. Lawless, Deborah Thorne
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
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 …
Consumer Bankruptcy Should Be Increasingly Irrelevant--Why Isn't It?, Pamela Foohey
Consumer Bankruptcy Should Be Increasingly Irrelevant--Why Isn't It?, Pamela Foohey
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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.
Life In The Sweatbox, Pamela Foohey, Robert M. Lawless, Katherine Porter, Deborah Thorne
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 …