Oak Park Real Estate & Estate Planning Blog

If you borrowed student loans to finance your law school education, it is likely that you also sought out loans to pay for your bar review courses and other study materials. It can be very costly to study for the bar in Illinois and other states throughout the country, and as a result, law school graduates often borrow between $10,000 and $20,000 to pay for the costs associated with studying for and taking the bar alone. That figure does not include the average cost of a law school education, which tends to be in the hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars range. Yet according to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal , a federal judge ruled that bar-exam loan debt is different from other student loan debt and thus should be dischargeable through consumer bankruptcy . If you have thousands of dollars in bar-exam loan debt and you do not have adequate income to pay your monthly bills, could filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy help you with your financial situation? Bar-Exam Lo

For many debtors in Oak Park, filing for consumer bankruptcy can be one of the best ways to get a fresh financial start and to recover after going into substantial debt. However, it is important to understand the ways in which Chapter 7 bankruptcy , for instance, might impact your ability to finance an education. According to an article from U.S. News & World Report , bankruptcy can indeed “allow borrowers suffocating under medical bills, credit card debt, and home foreclosures to catch a breath and start to rebuild.” At the same time, though, seeking personal bankruptcy protection can make it more difficult to secure a loan of any sort. If you are thinking about going back to school to complete your undergraduate education or to earn a bachelor’s degree, you should talk first with an experienced Oak Park bankruptcy attorney. Education Loan Consequences for Bankruptcy Filers As the article notes, securing college financing can be difficult after you have filed

Do consumers in Illinois need to be concerned about the efficacy of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and federal laws aimed to protect consumers from abusive lending and debt collection practices? According to a recent article in USA Today , many of the mechanisms put into place after the housing crisis continue to exist, but we may be living in a period in which politicians are waging a “war on consumer protection.” In short, we have consumer protection laws in place to prevent fraudulent banking practices and subprime lenders from impacting debtors. However, as the article explains, “consumer laws are useless unless they are enforced,” and some legislators are attempting to limit their enforcement. If you have questions or concerns about your rights as a consumer, you should reach out to an experienced consumer protection lawyer in Oak Park. An advocate at the Emerson Law Firm can speak with you today. Limited Enforcement Resources Could Result in Har

Last week was National Consumer Protection Week , a yearly coordinated campaign that seeks to encourage consumers to learn more about their rights when it comes to issues such as credit, consumer debt , banking, and identity theft. Among other tools, the campaign provides important information to Chicago residents to about repairing credit after bankruptcy , dealing with debt collectors, and knowing your rights when it comes to debt collection. The week-long campaign aims to raise awareness about issues plaguing consumers and to help debtors learn steps to help themselves. While raising awareness is important, is it actually changing the lives of Chicago consumers for the better? During National Consumer Protection Week, an article in The Telegraph reported that Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office released its “annual top 10 consumer complaints for 2015,” and matters concerning consumer debt ranked at the top of the list. Education-Related Complaints and Student Deb

What age group makes up the largest segment of debtors in the U.S. population? According to a recent article in TheStreet.com , members of the Baby Boomer generation appear to have taken on the most consumer debt over the last several decades while Millennials, in large part, have shied away from large-scale consumer lending (including smaller automobile loans and larger mortgages for home purchases). In some cases, the fact that Americans in the Millennial generation have not taken on a substantial part of the consumer debt load may have to do with the amount of student loans that many owe, preventing them from getting a mortgage, for instance. What do these two age groups have in common? Both younger adults and aging Americans make up the two largest segments of the population, but their debt loads seem to be strikingly unequal. Baby Boomers Incurring the Larger Portion of America’s Consumer Debt The article cites a recent report from the New York Federal Res

When most residents of Chicagoland hear the words personal bankruptcy or consumer bankruptcy, we think about how filing for Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection might be able to help us handle seemingly unmanageable debt. But in some instances, personal bankruptcy can be a way to avoid paying out certain types of awards or monies owed. According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal , when a broker files for personal bankruptcy, it is unlikely that she or he will be held responsible for paying an arbitration award. Learning More About Arbitration and Brokerage Firm Employees Generally speaking, when brokerage firms and brokers are required to pay arbitration awards, they can actually “be booted from the industry” if they fail to pay those awards on time, according to the article. The Financial Industry Regulation Authority (FINRA) is a Wall Street watchdog that seeks to “take tough action to ensure awards to investors made under its arbitration pro