Bankruptcy Judge Michelle Harner decided that a mortgage servicer must allow a chapter 13 debtor’s continued use of an online payment platform.

Bankruptcy courts are divided on whether the calculation of a trustee’s commissions includes distributions made to co-owners of property that the trustee has sold.

Bankruptcy Judge Michelle Harner held that a wholly unsecured, subordinate lien may be stripped off in chapter 13 even if the lien arose before the debtor owned the property.

Baltimore district judge applies the Fourth Circuit’s ‘substantial and unanticipated’ test to modifications of chapter 11 plans.

The ‘new value’ offered by old equity in a chapter 11 plan was insufficient because it was only a small fraction of claims and because the dividend to creditors was also small.

If a loan benefits both a debtor and someone else, the loan still may be included in counting whether the debt “arose from the commercial or business activities of the debtor.”

Judge Harner does the best she can to ease the burden imposed on a debtor by student loans.

Decision by Bankruptcy Judge Michelle Harner demonstrates the flaw in the Fourth Circuit’s rule requiring parallel proceedings in bankruptcy court and in arbitration when disputes are both core and non-core.

Only individuals in subchapter V of chapter 11 are barred from discharging debts found to be nondischargeable under Section 523(a).

The SBRA can be used to extinguish a creditors’ committee previously appointed in a ‘traditional’ chapter 11 case.