Follow these helpful hints to correctly recharacterize your Roth to a traditional IRA.

Uncle Sam is offering a set of perks on IRAs, starting in 2010. Here's how to capitalize on them.

Taxpayers can get a break in 2010, but they still have to find funds to pay for an IRA conversion.

Courts have divided on whether a new means test form is due upon conversion from Chapter 13 to Chapter 7. Most recently, Massachusetts bankruptcy Judge Rosenthal held that a new form is not due upon conversion. See In re Guarin, 2009 WL 4500476 (Bkrtcy.D.Mass. 2009). In this, he split with colleugaes in [...]

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I received an email from a person who filed Chapter 13 bankruptcy and who expressed dissatisfaction with their attorney. The caller said that his company was downsizing, or going out of business, and he knew now that he would not...

There is nothing intuitive about filing amended schedules at the time of conversion from Chapter 13 to Chapter 7. You can spend an eternity looking for an event code on the bankruptcy clerk’s website that makes sense.  For example, if you are looking for “amended schedules at time of conversion”, you will never find it.  If you are looking for “conversion/amended documents”, you will never find it.  You must look for “Schedule Post-Petition Debts Rule 1019″.  Provided you stumble upon that event code, you will successfully file your schedules to the satisfaction of the clerk.

A landlord has successfully circumvented the “cap” on lease rejection damages imposed under Bankruptcy Code section 502(b)(6). In deciding a case with highly unusual (and sympathetic) facts, Ninth Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski has made some broad statements that will henceforth encourage landlords to structure their claims, and their leases, to try to “beat the cap.” The case is In re El Toro Materials Company, 2007 WL 2822019 (9th Cir., October 1, 2007).

A few weeks ago the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel for the Ninth Circuit issued a decision which all chapter 7 trustees should welcome. The BAP upheld the decision of Bankruptcy Judge Kathleen Thompson, of the Central District of California, surcharging the Debtor’s homestead and household goods exemptions in the amount of the attorney fees and other costs incurred by the Trustee as a result of the Debtor’s refusal to vacate the home and related legal shennanigans aimed at frustrating the sale. In re Onubah, 2007 WL 2701336 (Bankr. App. 9th Cir.