January 2023

Former state senator files bankruptcy in effort to get out of jail for child support non-payment

Jeremy Hutchinson on Friday, his second day in jail, filed for voluntary bankruptcy and appealed the contempt order that incarcerates him indefinitely to the Arkansas Supreme Court, measures that should get him out of jail within a week at most without having to pay $524,000 in child support arrears for his freedom, his lawyer said Friday.

Clinton Lancaster, the Benton lawyer who brought a successful paternity action in Independence County against presidential son Hunter Biden, took on Hutchinson’s case Friday. Lancaster said Hutchinson’s Chapter 13 bankruptcy declaration carries a federal stay of the state-court divorce proceedings that landed Hutchinson in jail on Thursday.

“You can’t put people in jail for their debts once they file for bankruptcy … so [release] is a matter of time,” Lancaster said, describing Hutchinson’s incarceration as “debtor’s prison.”https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2022/dec/31/former-state-senator-files-bankruptcy-in-effort/”We want to make it clear that Jeremy is not running from having to pay his debts. He has incurred a lot of judgments and things of that nature and he just needs relief.”

Bankruptcy will allow Hutchinson, 48, to discharge some portions of the divorce-related debt ascribed to him by the court, but not what he owes in child support and not whatever financial penalties he incurs

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January 5, 2023 by ATTORNEY

FTX could pay over $2,100 per hour for bankruptcy lawyers

By Dietrich Knauth and Andrew Goudsward

(Reuters) – Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX has asked a U.S. bankruptcy judge for permission to pay its top restructuring lawyers as much as $2,165 per hour, an unusually high rate for a company that cannot afford to repay all of its debts.

FTX declared bankruptcy on Nov. 11, collapsing amid a wave of customer withdrawals. Federal prosecutors have charged founder Sam Bankman-Fried with stealing billions of dollars in FTX customer assets to plug losses at his hedge fund, Alameda Research, and two of his former associates have already pleaded guilty. Bankman-Fried is scheduled to be arraigned in New York on Thursday.

New York-based law firm Sullivan & Cromwell is representing FTX in its Chapter 11 case and guiding its efforts to return assets to customers. FTX late Wednesday asked the Delaware federal judge overseeing the case for approval to pay the firm’s partners and special counsel between $1,575 and $2,165 per hour for their work.

The top lawyers’ rates far exceed the $1,300 per hour billed by FTX’s new CEO John Ray, who also filed an application with the court late Wednesday.

Court-approved billing rates for bankruptcy attorneys did not cross the $2,000-per-hour mark

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January 4, 2023 by ATTORNEY

Bankruptcy Court Holds EITC Refunds Are Not Exempt From Creditors In Bankruptcy

The intersection of taxes and bankruptcy present interesting issues. A recent bankruptcy case demonstrated this by considering whether Earned Income Tax Credit refunds (and their New Mexico state equivalents) can be exempt from creditors in a bankruptcy proceeding. The case shows how the answer can depend on where you live! In this case, under New Mexico law, the bankruptcy court held that these refunds were not generally exempt from creditors.

In the case, the debtor was entitled to tax refunds, which were in part attributable to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and a New Mexico version, the Working Families Tax Credit. As the court explained, these credits are “intended to provide economic relief to low-income heads of household who work.”

The debtor listed the tax refunds under the state’s “wildcard” exemption, which allows a debtor to choose what property to exempt; however, the wildcard exemption here had a limit of $500. The bankruptcy trustee eventually objected to the claimed exemptions to the extent they exceeded the $500 limit.

This post will consider two of the arguments made in response to the trustee’s objection. First, that the EITC tax refunds were not part of

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January 2, 2023 by ATTORNEY
January 2023
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