Debtors And Creditors In America

Americans now depend more heavily upon credit than any other society on Earth, or any other time in history. Borrowing has become a way of life for millions of families, and it is hard to imagine a time when charge accounts did not exist. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to assume that, because a wallet filled with plastic instead of cash is a relatively new phenomenon, Americans have not been borrowers and lenders since the colonization of the New World. Author Peter J. Coleman proves otherwise. In one Form or another -- notes of hand, book credit, commercial paper, mortgages, land contracts -- settlers borrowed to pay their passage from Europe, to buy and clear land, to build and operate mills, to purchase slaves, and to gamble and drink. Debtors' prison awaited those who could not pay their debts, and a pauper's grave received the unfortunate who lacked the private means to feed and clothe himself in prison. While the debtors' prisons described in this book no longer exist, the author maintains that our credit-oriented society has yet to devise cheap, efficient, equitable, and humane methods of enforcing contracts for debt.

Debt was an inescapable fact of life in early America. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, its sinfulness was preached by ministers and the right to imprison debtors was unquestioned. By 1800, imprisonment for debt was under attack and insolvency was no longer seen as a moral failure, merely an economic setback. In Republic of Debtors, Bruce H. Mann illuminates this crucial transformation in early American society. From the wealthy merchant to the backwoods farmer, Mann tells the personal stories of men and women struggling to repay their debts and stay ahead of their creditors. He opens a window onto a society undergoing such fundamental changes as the growth of a commercial economy, the emergence of a consumer marketplace, and a revolution for independence. In addressing debt Americans debated complicated questions of commerce and agriculture, nationalism and federalism, dependence and independence, slavery and freedom. And when numerous prominent men—including the richest man in America and a justice of the Supreme Court—found themselves imprisoned for debt or forced to become fugitives from creditors, their fate altered the political dimensions of debtor relief, leading to the highly controversial Bankruptcy Act of 1800. Whether a society forgives its debtors is not just a question of law or economics; it goes to the heart of what a society values. In chronicling attitudes toward debt and bankruptcy in early America, Mann explores the very character of American society.

In 2005, more than two million Americans—six out of every 1,000 people—filed for bankruptcy. Though personal bankruptcy rates have since stabilized, bankruptcy remains an important tool for the relief of financially distressed households. In Bankrupt in America, Mary and Brad Hansen offer a vital perspective on the history of bankruptcy in America, beginning with the first lasting federal bankruptcy law enacted in 1898. Interweaving careful legal history and rigorous economic analysis, Bankrupt in America is the first work to trace how bankruptcy was transformed from an intermittently used constitutional provision, to an indispensable tool for business, to a central element of the social safety net for ordinary Americans. To do this, the authors track federal bankruptcy law, as well as related state and federal laws, examining the interaction between changes in the laws and changes in how people in each state used the bankruptcy law. In this thorough investigation, Hansen and Hansen reach novel conclusions about the causes and consequences of bankruptcy, adding nuance to the discussion of the relationship between bankruptcy rates and economic performance.

"In Bankrupt in America, Mary and Brad Hansen show that examination of how Americans have used bankruptcy law and the history of the law itself offers important perspective on the history of bankruptcy in America. Using new statistical and documentary evidence, they illustrate the cycles of interaction between bankruptcy law's use and its own evolution. The authors first offer a broad overview of the laws at various levels governing the collection of debt and position their research in the literature on bankruptcy. They establish the need for a framework that integrates various lines of thought, and introduce of the methods of their approach, which incorporates new institutional economics and cliometrics, that is, the incorporation of econometric data analysis. They then illustrate the general path to bankruptcy by discussing the series of decisions that creditors and debtors make at every stage and how various formal and informal institutions influence these decisions. The core of the book will comprise a generally chronological narrative from 1898, when the first major federal bankruptcy law was enacted to an end point of 2005. Hansen and Hansen reach novel conclusions about causes and consequences of bankruptcy and raise nuances in the relationship between bankruptcy rates and economic growth. For instance, while higher bankruptcy rates are usually considered a negative, the authors show that higher bankruptcy may actually signal economic growth if it is due to an expansion of credit markets. Further, the authors contribute to our understanding of what drives differences in bankruptcy rates among states by illustrating the influence of the broader legal framework. Ultimately, this work find that long-run growth in personal bankruptcy is the result of growth in credit and that the study of legal governance provides useful viewpoints from which to draw out patterns in bankruptcy"--

Bankruptcy in America, in stark contrast to its status in most other countries, typically signifies not a debtor's last gasp but an opportunity to catch one's breath and recoup. Why has the nation's legal system evolved to allow both corporate and individual debtors greater control over their fate than imaginable elsewhere? Masterfully probing the political dynamics behind this question, David Skeel here provides the first complete account of the remarkable journey American bankruptcy law has taken from its beginnings in 1800, when Congress lifted the country's first bankruptcy code right out of English law, to the present day. Skeel shows that the confluence of three forces that emerged over many years--an organized creditor lobby, pro-debtor ideological currents, and an increasingly powerful bankruptcy bar--explains the distinctive contours of American bankruptcy law. Their interplay, he argues in clear, inviting prose, has seen efforts to legislate bankruptcy become a compelling battle royale between bankers and lawyers--one in which the bankers recently seem to have gained the upper hand. Skeel demonstrates, for example, that a fiercely divided bankruptcy commission and the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress have yielded the recent, ideologically charged battles over consumer bankruptcy. The uniqueness of American bankruptcy has often been noted, but it has never been explained. As different as twenty-first century America is from the horse-and-buggy era origins of our bankruptcy laws, Skeel shows that the same political factors continue to shape our unique response to financial distress.

Through its previous seven editions, Examples & Explanations: Bankruptcy and Debtor/Creditor has been popular with students and practitioners for its extraordinarily lucid explanations of complex concepts. In this eighth edition, the coauthors, Brian Blum and Samir Parikh, combine their expertise to enhance the book’s treatment of all salient areas of bankruptcy and debtor-creditor law. Although there are many changes in the eighth edition, it maintains the format and approach of previous editions. The textual discussion of the principles, goals, policies, and legal rules of Bankruptcy and Debtor-Creditor law is clear and accessible. The Examples & Explanations pedagogy gives the reader practice interpreting the Bankruptcy Code and applying the rules and principles to factual situations. This book will help law students master fundamental federal bankruptcy and state debtor-creditor concepts and rules, which will help them succeed in upper-level bankruptcy/debtor-creditor courses; and it will also give them a leg up when they encounter bankruptcy in other areas, such as family law, taxation, real estate, business organizations, secured transactions, torts, and others. New to the 8th Edition: New problems addressing current bankruptcy issues, including mass tort bankruptcies like Purdue Pharma and Boy Scouts of America.? New cases throughout and discussion of recent developments in the law, including unique insights into 363 assets sales, fraudulent transfer law, 524(g), small business bankruptcy under Subchapter V, and dischargeability of student loan debt. New overview sections in each chapter, designed to provide a summary of the Bankruptcy Code sections covered. Rewriting of text to enhance clarity, add hypotheticals, and integrate the discussion of?new topics. Professors and students will benefit from: Examples & Explanations are designed to highlight fundamental issues covered in the textual part of the chapter and to allow students to self-test on topics discussed in the text. The Examples set out a factual scenarios which are resolved in the Explanation, with reference back to the textual material. Topics have been arranged within each chapter to allow students to see the interactions between different Code sections, and to move from basic to more complex topics. Each chapter contains cross references to material in other chapters to enable students to link themes in various chapters and to see how the topics fit together to form a comprehensive system. The text is clearly written to be accessible to students, and covers rules and concepts in the depth and breadth that is likely to be required of students in the bankruptcy/debtor-creditor course. One-of-a-kind flowcharts and diagrams aid in understanding by the visual representation of concepts, processes, and relationships. The extensive glossary at the end of the book gives students a ready explanation of the meaning of the many terms of art that they may encounter in this area, both in the book and in other materials.

A contract is supposed to be a meeting of the minds: two people of equal understanding putting down a fairly negotiated agreement. In reality, most agreements are dictated by wealthy corporations or individuals-sellers, lenders, landlords-and include terms of art that consumers do not fully understand. We do not find out that some innocuous sounding phrase has a major impact on our rights and responsibilities until it is too late. "Debtor's Dictionary" levels the playing field. Containing definitions of terms commonly used in contractual language, this indispensible book turns you into a savvy consumer. Once you learn the vocabulary, sellers will find it much more difficult to take advantage of you. Don't sign on the bottom line until you have read "Debtor's Dictionary" from cover to cover. About Sid Moore Sidney L. (Sid) Moore Jr. was born in the small town of Montezuma, Georgia, in 1940, son of a lawyer father and a newspaper columnist mother. He worked his way through undergraduate college and Walter F. George Law School as a newspaper reporter and went on to become a widely known lecturer in Continuing Legal Education seminars for attorneys. He has also been lead counsel in criminal or civil litigation in half the states in America. Sid started his law career as a Reginald Heber Smith Community Law Fellow with the University of Pennsylvania, representing the poor in Little Rock, Arkansas. He moved from there to Atlanta where he ran a legal aid program for elderly consumers before returning to school at the University of Wisconsin Law School for a Master of Laws Degree. His thesis was on equal justice for the poor. Returning to Georgia he served as the regional director of a twenty-eight-county middle Georgia section of the Georgia Legal Services Program where his record in defending consumers against predatory creditors earned him a position as litigation coordinator of the National Consumer Law Center in Boston, a national think-tank and back-up center for consumer lawyers throughout the nation. In 1977 he became Georgia's first full-time Consumers' Utility Counsel, representing residential and small business consumers against rate increase requests filed by the major electric, gas, and telephone utilities. He was a charter member of the National Association of State Utility Consumers' Advocates. He remains a member of the National Association of Consumer Advocates (NACA), an association of more than one thousand private and public consumer lawyers from throughout the country, and of the Consumer Law Section of the State Bar of Georgia. In 1979 he began a private consumer practice in Decatur, Georgia, in which he represented thousands of individual consumers who were being sued by creditors or who had been ripped off in some fashion. In class action litigation, Sid has recovered millions of dollars for Georgia consumers and has handled appellate litigation which paved the way for relief for thousands. His cases have made more than $4,000,000 available to local charities through cy pres awards of money illegally taken by creditors. Sid retired in 2007 back to his home town of Montezuma where he resides with his wife, Yvonne, in the 125-year-old home where he was raised. He has continued his interest in class action litigation as well as producing this book and frequently lecturing to other lawyers on the ins and outs of handling credit problems without putting the client into bankruptcy. He is considered a national authority on credit mathematics as applied to both usury and contract compliance, and on the defense of debtors in collection cases. He gives his time freely to spread his knowledge of consumer rights and volunteers as a mentor to younger lawyers seeking to develop their litigation skills. This book is the culmination of forty years of experience in lecturing, writing, and litigation.

Creditor Rights and the Public Interest supports the greater representation of non-traditional creditors in the process of insolvency restructuring in Canada, concentrating particularly on restructuring under the federal Companies' Creditors' Arrangement Act (CCAA). Arguing in favour of the representation of such non-traditional creditors as workers, consumers, trade suppliers, and local governments, Janis Sarra describes the existing process of addressing their interests, analyzes four case studies that focus on non-creditor groups, and compares the Canadian approach to that of several other countries, such as Germany, France, and the United States. Sarra draws on a comprehensive body of academic literature that covers a broad range of issues--insolvency theory, corporate governance theory, legislative history, and bankruptcy and insolvency practice. She further surveys the relevant legislation and supplements her analysis with insights drawn from extensive primary research of court records and personal interviews with lawyers, judges, and government officials. Creditor Rights and the Public Interest ultimately illustrates the way in which the concept of the public interest can be utilized to foreground the concerns of non-traditional stakeholders. Sarra provides a coherent account of the justification for recognizing these creditors by situating insolvency law in a legal regime that realizes a duty to maximize all of the interests and investments at stake in the corporation. In an academic field where scholarship is currently scarce, Sarra's text will be a welcome contribution.