Oak Park Real Estate & Estate Planning Blog

Personal bankruptcy trends in Oak Park and throughout the U.S. can sometimes provide us with a bigger picture concerning consumer debt and economic stability. A new report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) addresses recent trends in consumer bankruptcy filings and the ways in which those trends have changed in the last two decades. As such, the report considers how consumer bankruptcy filings trends shifted with the passage of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) in 2005, and the foreclosure crisis and subsequent recession that began more than 10 years ago. What does the CFPB have to say about bankruptcy trends in the 2000s? We will say more about the report and its potential implications for consumers in the present who are considering bankruptcy. Key Aims of the CFPB Report Given that the new CFPB report stretches over a period of nearly 20 years, there are some key aims that the authors intended to address. Those key aims, or q...

When we talk about the financial crisis and the bursting of the housing bubble, we often discuss it in the past tense—as something that occurred about a decade ago and is now over. However, many consumers in Oak Park, Illinois and across the country continue to struggle with debt , and many are still dealing with the lingering effects of the financial crisis. According to a recent article in Marketplace , seniors are having particular difficulty recovering from the economic collapse. Some are filing for personal bankruptcy , while others are attempting to live off of limited incomes while still making payments on debt. What debt relief options are available to older adults, and are those debt relief options different from those available to younger people? Lost Money in Retirement Accounts There are many reasons that seniors are struggling with their finances in the decade after the economic collapse, including those who saved significant amounts of money in reti...

During the recession, consumer bankruptcy rates rose dramatically across the United States. As a recent article from Crain’s Chicago Business makes clear, there were 822,590 bankruptcies nationwide in 2007, and that number grew to more than one million each year. To put that increase another way, the rate of personal bankruptcy in the country increased by more than 20% during the peak of the recession. But have all states in the U.S. recovered, returning to the pre-recession rates of bankruptcy? As the article clarifies, while the national number of bankruptcies has dropped once again to levels that are even lower than those reported in 2007, Illinois continues to have higher rates of consumer bankruptcy than many other states. What do the higher rates of personal bankruptcy in Illinois tell us? If you live in the Chicago area and have questions about filing for consumer bankruptcy, you should always discuss your case with an experienced bankruptcy attorney. Illino...