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Twenty-one changes to fees included in the Bankruptcy Court Miscellaneous Fee Schedule effective Sept. 1 are to be charged for services provided by the bankruptcy courts. Some of the updated charges include:

1. a. For reproducing any document and providing a copy in paper form, $.50 per page. This fee applies to services rendered on behalf of the U.S. if the document requested is available through electronic access. b. For reproducing and transmitting in any manner a copy of an electronic record stored outside of the court’s electronic case management system, including but not limited to, document files, audio recordings, and video recordings, $31 per record provided. Audio recordings of court proceedings continue to be governed by a separate fee under item 3 of this schedule.

2. For certification of any document, $11. For exemplification of any document, $22.

3. For reproduction of an audio recording of a court proceeding, $31. This fee applies to services rendered on behalf of the United States if the recording is available electronically.

For the updated Bankruptcy Court Miscellaneous Fee Schedule effective Sept. 1, please click here. 

Consumers filing for bankruptcy in 2017 reported aggregated assets of $80 billion and aggregated total liabilities of $105 billion, according to an annual report filed by the Judiciary with Congress, according to a DOJ press release. The report, required by Congress under the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, describes the activities of individuals with predominantly consumer debt. Some highlights of the report are:

• Sixty-two percent of assets were real property, and the remaining assets were personal property.
• The median average income reported by debtors was $2,741 a month, and the median average monthly expenses were $2,645. A total of 742,323 consumer bankruptcy petitions were filed in 2017, 1 percent fewer than in 2016.
• About 61 percent of the petitions were filed under Chapter 7, in which a debtor’s assets are liquidated and proceeds are distributed to creditors, except for exempt assets. About 38 percent were filed under Chapter 13, in which debtors make installment payments to creditors under court-ordered plans. Debtors were able to successfully pay their debts in 48 percent of the Chapter 13 cases closed in 2017 – slightly less than the 52 percent reported in 2016.

Click here to read the full report. 

A judge yesterday gave the green light to consumer lawyers who want to pursue class action treatment for one million people who they say were victimized by predatory lending at the hands of Think Finance LLC, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The decision by Judge Harlin Hale of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Dallas was a win for lawyers in Virginia, Florida, California and nationwide, who were suing Think Finance when it filed for chapter 11 protection in October 2017. Fewer than 5,000 consumers responded to a call for bankruptcy claims, and each of those people would have had to debate Think Finance in court over the merits of their claims if Judge Hale had sided with the company in the quarrel over whether class proofs of claim would be allowed. Think Finance denies victimizing consumers, and insists it is just a financial services technology provider that facilitates online lending by others. However, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro and consumer lawyers sued, accusing Think Finance of using Native American tribes as fronts to make otherwise-illegal loans to desperate, low-income people.