Oak Park Real Estate & Estate Planning Blog

Are you considering bankruptcy and wondering whether you could be eligible to have your student loans discharged in bankruptcy? Millions of Americans currently have student loan debt. In fact, according to Best Colleges , at the end of 2022, approximately 43.5 million Americans had federal student loan debt, which is about 13 percent of the U.S. population. Of those with federal student loan debt, a majority owe between $20,000 and $40,000. Those figures do not include Americans who currently have private student loan debt and who are struggling to make those payments. While federal student loan payments have been paused since 2020, payments are scheduled to resume in 2023, and many debtors are concerned about how they will be able to afford the payments. If you want to have your student loans discharged in bankruptcy, what will you need to do? Our Oak Park bankruptcy lawyers can provide you with more information about the steps you will need to take and how the recent guidance could...

If you are currently thinking about personal bankruptcy , or if you have been doing some initial research into the consumer bankruptcy process, you will likely have come across the term “liquidation bankruptcy.” Understanding the distinctions among so many different bankruptcy terms can be difficult, and there are many overlapping terms that are used to describe different types of bankruptcy or bankruptcy processes. It is important to understand what liquidation means when it comes to consumer bankruptcy, but it is also important to know that there are types of consumer bankruptcies that do not involve any kind of liquidation. Our Oak Park consumer bankruptcy attorneys can give you more information about liquidation and the consumer bankruptcy process. Liquidation Refers to the Trustee Liquidating Non-Exempt Assets What does liquidation mean in a bankruptcy case? In short, in the consumer bankruptcy context, liquidation refers to the bankruptcy trustee liquidating non-exempt assets. Ac...

If you have had your student loan debt discharged through a Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 consumer bankruptcy case , the creditor is not permitted to continue making attempts to collect that debt. To be sure, you are no longer liable for a debt that has been discharged in bankruptcy, and creditors and debt collectors cannot try to hold you liable for discharged debts. However, according to a recent article in MarketWatch , the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) recently acknowledged that lenders are violating the law by collecting student loan debt that has already been discharged in bankruptcy. The CFPB is now telling lenders that they need to repay consumers who have made payments on discharged student loan debts. Our Oak Park consumer bankruptcy lawyers can tell you more. Learning More About Unfair Practices By Student Loan Lenders According to the article, “for years, borrowers have been going to court claiming that student loan companies were illegally collecting on debt they h...

Anyone who is considering the possibility of filing for bankruptcy due in part to substantial medical debt may be wondering: is medical debt different from other types of debt in bankruptcy? And more specifically, is it possible to have medical debt discharged in bankruptcy, or do you need to go through a particular process when it comes to medical debt? To be clear, medical debt is treated like other unsecured debt in a personal bankruptcy case, including both Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcy. Accordingly, if you are eligible to file for bankruptcy, you should be able to anticipate that you can have your medical debt discharged. To be certain about your eligibility for bankruptcy and for a discharge, you should have an experienced bankruptcy attorney in Oak Park assess your circumstances. In the meantime, we can provide you with additional information about medical debt and why it is usually dischargeable in consumer bankruptcy cases in Illinois. Only Certain Debts are Non-Dischar...

If you are thinking about filing for personal bankruptcy , you may already know that one of the major benefits of bankruptcy filing is the automatic stay. The automatic stay is an injunction that prevents creditors and debt collectors from taking any actions to collect on the debts you owe as soon as you file your petition. Accordingly, the automatic stay prevents creditors and debt collectors from initiating lawsuits against debtors, moving forward with lawsuits, initiating or moving forward with foreclosure proceedings, and even making calls or sending letters in an attempt to collect on debts owed. Yet what happens when a debt collector does not yet know that a debtor has filed for bankruptcy and takes action to collect on a debt? In other words, does the debtor have a claim against the debt collector for a violation of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code or a violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA)? The U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico issued a decision ...

Anyone who is considering the possibility of filing for consumer bankruptcy in light of the new guidance from the Biden administration and the U.S. Department of Justice should learn more about what is involved in the process of seeking a discharge of student loan debt in bankruptcy. You should get in touch with one of our Oak Park bankruptcy attorneys to find out more about having student loans discharged in bankruptcy given your particular circumstances. In the meantime, the following are some of the top things for you to consider about student loans and bankruptcy. New Guidance Has Been Issued As we noted above, new guidance on discharging student loans in bankruptcy has been issued. Specifically, the new guidance addresses the process for a debtor to seek to have student loans discharged, and the process by which the Department of Justice and Department of Education will determine the debtor’s eligibility for a discharge. Most significantly, the process will now involve an “attes...