People like to classify things. That includes laws and lawyers. Both the public at large and we attorneys like to talk about different areas of the law as if they were nice and neat—totally separate from one another.
For example, we talk about family law (or divorce law), personal injury law, contract law. “Oh,” we might say, “he’s a bankruptcy lawyer,” or, “she’s an elder law attorney.” Unfortunately life, including law, is rarely that nice, neat, and organized.
No, the reality is that a case can involve several different areas of law. The one I want to focus on today is quite common, actually. It’s when the worlds of divorce and bankruptcy collide.
When one spouse, or both, are going through bankruptcy during a divorce, it can cause some special problems. This is because when a bankruptcy case is first filed, it also creates what is known as the bankruptcy estate. The estate is made up of most of the debtor’s property. Since divorce often involves the division of property, you can imagine that this may muck up the works, and to some extent, it does.
Fortunately, bankruptcy courts rarely want to get involved in divorce cases, so, if requested, they will often lift the automatic stay (The “automatic stay” is beyond the scope of this blog post, but in a nutshell, it’s the provision of the bankruptcy code that is supposed to stop all collection efforts ponce the bankruptcy is filed) and allow the divorce case to proceed.
Tim Evans is a Hattiesburg, Mississippi lawyer who handles both divorce and bankruptcy cases. If you need advice in either area, give him a call at 601-255-5085, or email Tim Evans with your question.
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