From the comments:
As a conservative GOP bankruptcy lawyer, I oppose the proposed changes. However they are couched, they are based upon reactionary social attitudes we haven't heard since the 1920s: that it's somehow "dishonest" and "immoral" for consumers to file bankruptcy. The idea that our entrepreneurial and credit-happy economic system encourages taking risks and borrowing on credit, and that some risk-takers will fail, or credit card holders overextend themselves, is the foundation of the bankruptcy system. If an honest debtor goes into debt to take an economic risk, whether wisely or foolishly, and fails, he or she can get a bankruptcy discharge, and a fresh start in life. The fresh start is not cost-free: the debtor must surrender all assets (except for homestead and exempt property) to the bankruptcy trustee. Among the mean-spirited aspects of the legislation is its attack on bankruptcy lawyers, with requirements that we certify that our clients are telling the truth on their bankruptcy schedules. Clients already swear that their schedules are true under penalty of perjury; lawyers generally lack the resources to audit their indigent clients' books and records for accuracy. Under the current bankruptcy system, creditors willing to pay for audits can do so. Requiring routine audits, and shifting the costs of those audits to indigent consumer debtors and their lawyers adds an additional and cruel economic cost to bankruptcy filings without any real corresponding benefit, a result clearly contemplated by this legislation. Creating the potential to set lawyer against client is only one reason these proposed amendments are offensive.
And the other side of the legal aisle:
The Stinging Nettle is in full support.Thanks for doing this. I am a Bankruptcy practitioner, usually representing creditors. This law is horrible.
Posted by tunesmith at March 10, 2005 01:46 PM
