Change Is on the Horizon - Practitioners and Debtors Wait for Bankruptcy Changes to Take Effect
October 5, 2005
With all the provisions of the new Bankruptcy law set to be implemented in October of 2005, it is time to look at how the new legislation has affected debtors since it was signed in April, as well as the likely future impact upon full implementation. This law will directly impact any individual who falls upon hard financial times and considers bankruptcy in the future.
Very rarely has there been such diverse reaction to new legislation as there was on April 20, 2005, when President Bush signed the new Bankruptcy law. The legislation was lauded by the credit card companies as a necessity to fight back against reckless and free-spending consumers who sought to run up their credit card bills and then skip out without paying.
At the same time, consumer advocates, a majority of bankruptcy judges, and bankruptcy attorneys nationwide painted the new law as legislation bought and paid for by the credit card companies in an effort to increase their own profit margins and to protect themselves from consumers who should never have been granted credit by the companies in the first place.
If the intent behind the new law, whose official title is “The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005” was to limit the number of Bankruptcy filings, then the result in the months leading up to the impending change has had the opposite result. As reported by the American Bankruptcy Institute, bankruptcy filings
nationwide for the months of April, May and June were up by 12% over the same period last year. The mindset of debtors (those who are filing the bankruptcy) seems to be that if they do...
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BusinessWest
September 6, 2005
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