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Bankruptcy offers a temporary sanctuary for parties seeking relief from a variety of problems - financial crisis, lawsuits, collection actions, repossessions, foreclosure, and pandemics. Filing bankruptcy before a money judgment is entered or on the eve of a foreclosure sale is - often to the consternation of creditors - perfectly valid.  Creditors often complain that the debtor is acting in bad faith, and the bankruptcy court should toss the case.  Those arguments almost always fail. [...]

Though bankruptcy filings are down in 2021, the expiration of the Paycheck Protection Program and reopening of the courts nationwide could lead to a rise in bankruptcy filings with many businesses still struggling to cope with the economic and supply chain aftereffects of the pandemic and consumer purchasing habits.  These bankruptcies, in turn, will have an inevitable ripple effect on creditors and other claimants, whose abilities to collect on claims and exercise rights, are significantly [...]

The  AME Zion Church of Palo Alto, Inc. was founded in 1918 and has occupied its sanctuary for over a half century.  In 2018, the Bishop of the Western Episcopal District of The African Method Episcopal Zion Church importuned the church's pastor into deeding the church to a corporation that the Bishop had formed.  The corporation then borrowed, without the church's knowledge, several million dollars using the church's property as collateral.   When the the lenders [...]