Consumer Bankruptcy Committee

ABI Committee News

Consumer Bankruptcy Educational Sessions from ABI’s Regional Conferences

The summer of 2008 featured a great lineup of consumer bankruptcy educational sessions from the ABI’s regional conferences, including the 3rd Annual Northeast Consumer Forum held in conjunction with the Northeast Bankruptcy Conference in Brewster, MA.  In the outline below you will find selected session materials from the Northeast Consumer Forum, Mid-Atlantic Bankruptcy Workshop and the Southeast Bankruptcy Workshop.

Northeast Consumer Forum

Southeast Bankruptcy Workshop

Mid-Atlantic Bankruptcy Workshop

From The ABI Law Review - A Study of Consumers’ Post-Discharge Finances: Struggle, Stasis, or Fresh-Start?

The American Bankruptcy Institute Law Review, published twice a year by Thomson West, is among the most respected scholarly publications in the bankruptcy community. Free to ABI members, the ABI Law Review has the largest circulation of any bankruptcy law review. The Law Review is edited by top students at St. John's University School of Law under the direction of Prof. G. Ray Warner, an ABI director, former member of the ABI Executive Committee and the director of the LL.M. program at St. John's.  The Spring 2008 issue contains seven articles and one LL.M. thesis on topics such as substantive consolidation in large public company bankruptcies, due process and nationwide service, trends in distressed debt investing, wage priorities in bankruptcy, valuation practices and Daubert and non-assignable contracts in bankruptcy.

Of particular interest to the committee is the article entitled A Study of Consumers’ Post-Discharge Finances:  Struggle, Stasis, or Fresh-Start?, written by Jay L. Zagorsky and Lois R. Lupica.  Mr. Zagorsky is a research scientist at The Ohio State University Center for Human Resource Research, and Ms. Lupica is the Maine Law Foundation Professor of Law at the University of Maine School of Law.  In this article the authors address the question of whether bankruptcy’s remedial discharge operates in a way consistent with its theoretical justification:  whether the discharge provides honest, but unfortunate debtors a meaningful and sustainable financial fresh start.  They examine the issue of the impact of a bankruptcy discharge on consumers’ financial distress through the analysis of a very large random national sample survey, concluding that the results show an encouraging outcome:  the average person who files for bankruptcy to relieve financial distress catches up with their peers, but the time needed before the impact of this distress is no longer recognizable in their finances is long.  Please click below to read the full article.

A Study of Consumers’ Post-Discharge Finances:  Struggle, Stasis, or Fresh-Start? (pdf)

Committee Session At The Winter Leadership Conference

The Winter Leadership Conference will be held Dec. 4-6 in Tucson, AZ, at the Westin La Paloma.  This year’s conference will feature another great group of sessions and speakers, as well as some top-notch entertainment!  The Consumer Bankruptcy Committee will hold a joint session on Friday morning at 9:30 a.m., with the Real Estate and Legislation Committees.  The Consumer Committee’s Education Director, Alane Beckett of Becket & Lee, LLP in Malvern, Pa., will moderate the panel for the session entitled “Politics, Practicality and People:  The Impact of the Mortgage Meltdown in Bankruptcy.” The panel will include Ronald Greenspan of FTI Consulting, Inc. in Los Angeles, Hon. David W. Houston, III, U.S. Bankruptcy Court (District of Miss.), Debra L. Miller, Standing Chapter 13 Trustee in South Bend, IN and Tara Twomey of the National Consumer Law Center in Carmel, CA. Registration is now open. Click here to register now.