Sometimes You Feel Like a Chapter 13 Bankruptcy, and Sometimes You Don't!

While I've filed either hundreds or thousands of Chapter 13 Cases for my clients in Arizona (it's hard to keep track after thirty years), I don't love them nearly as much as I used to love them.

Why?

Well, Chapter 13 Cases don't have a "Superdischarge" anymore.

And that makes me sad.

And the amount of dough squeezed out of folks over the life of the Chapter 13 Plan seems far too large to me, these days.

But the "big advantage" of a Chapter 13, that it permits stripdowns of second and third mortgages, doesn't seem like a very big advantage to me.

That's because this year, instead of the usual 100,000 mortgage foreclosures and trustee's sales we usually have in the United States, we'll have more like 1.4 million.

That means (in my humble opinion) that when I strip down liens for a Chapter 13 Client, I may not be doing them any favor at all. Because when the second lien and third mortgage are stripped, finally, FIVE LONG YEARS down the road, the value of the house may well be far lower than the FIRST mortgage.

Get it?

And if I can avoid harming you, I'd rather avoid harming you.