Getting the Whole Picture

For the second time in as many days a person I was speaking to highlighted the importance of getting the whole picture when looking at a bankruptcy matter. I accepted the compliment today when the potential client said that, after over a decade of trying to resolve certain debt issues and getting help from various professionals, I was the first person to sit and listen to the whole story. Actually, this is also true of family law cases such as custody or divorce. That may be why I am involved in both of these kinds of cases – because I naturally want to look at the whole picture to find a global resolution when possible.

Yesterday the issue was being served with a foreclosure notice on a house where the person was never named of the deed to the house. After a few more inquiries, it became clear that the person had a potential dower or curtesy (yes, that is spelled correctly) interest in the property as a result of being married to the owner at the time it was purchased. However, that was not the end of the story. I explained that we needed to look closer at the underlying documents. If the foreclosure was only extinguishing a dower or curtesy interest, then the person had nothing to lose. But, if they had ever signed a promissory note, even without ownership in the house, they could be hit with a deficiency debt. It is dangerous in law to stop at the simplest or most obvious answer; you gotta look at the whole picture.

Actually, that was more of a slice of the whole picture, but today’s story was more compelling on looking at the everything. To minimize wordiness, I will not explain the whole picture. This tale involved going back to 2003 and recounting several key events, tragedies, and attempts at resolving debt. What I learned was that nearly $100k of tax debt might be discharged except that there was a time they would have been “tolled”. I knew I had to get tax account transcripts to determine this. Also, there were events and circumstances that might actually allow for the rare discharge of student loan debt. However, it was clear that if I could help with the tax debt, then there might be enough relief that the student loans would not be so onerous. If I had not taken the hour plus to hear all the ins and outs of this families circumstances, I may have missed a key piece of the puzzle and blundered ahead making things worse rather than better.

The end result was that by looking at the whole picture, rather than just the immediate concern of the student loan debt, the potential client left with a sense of hope. I could not promise that the student loans could be discharged, but by coming at it from a different angle, relief was still at hand.