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Former U.S. Rep. Kerry Bentivolio (R) filed for bankruptcy in Detroit this week, listing debts of nearly $300,000, including $120,000 in an ongoing claim involving a former campaign worker, the Detroit Free Press reported today. Bentivolio served one two-year term before being beaten in the Republican primary last August by Dave Trott, a Birmingham lawyer and businessman who replaced him in Congress this year. Bentivolio's chapter 7 bankruptcy petition, filed on Monday, comes as little surprise given his campaign debts. In his year-end campaign finance report filed late last month, he listed debts of more than $128,000 — $80,000 of that owed to Robert Dindoffer, his former campaign manager — against just $3,052 cash on hand. W. Kent Clark, the lawyer representing Bentivolio in the bankruptcy filing, told the Free Press this afternoon that the $120,000 unsecured debt listed is the amount Dindoffer is claiming after rejecting an earlier settlement proposed by Bentivolio. Clark said that he could not reveal what Bentivolio had offered to settled the dispute.

A man in bankruptcy can run from his creditors, but he can’t hide from obligations to his ex-wife, as former billionaire Samuel Wyly learned last week, Bloomberg News reported on Friday. Wyly, who helped build companies including arts-and-crafts retailer Michaels Stores Inc., filed for chapter 11 protection in October to fend off an impending judgment in a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. A Manhattan jury found that Wyly and his deceased brother, Charles, used offshore trust accounts to trade secretly in the stock of four companies on whose boards they sat. Samuel Wyly’s former wife, Torrie Steele, sued in bankruptcy court in Dallas, claiming that his responsibility to pay her $500,000 a year is a support obligation that’s not wiped out by chapter 11. 

David Cassidy, heartthrob star of the 1970s sitcom The Partridge Family, filed for bankruptcy protection, citing both assets and debt of as much as $10 million, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Cassidy, who has homes in Florida and Saratoga Springs, N.Y., listed credit card debt including $21,000 owed to American Express and $17,000 owed to Citi bank, among other liabilities, in his chapter 11 petition filed Wednesday in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

ABI Resident Scholar Prof. Anne Lawton talks with Chief Bankruptcy Judges Rebecca Connelly (W.D. Va.) and Brian Lynch (W.D. Wash.) about the proposed national chapter 13 plan form being considered by the Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure of the Judicial Conference of the U.S.

Judges Connelly and Lynch, who testified at a Jan. 23 public forum before the Committee on the proposed plan, also discuss points raised by sides supporting the national plan form, and those critical of the proposal. To listen to the podcast, please click here: http://www.abi.org/podcasts/examining-controversial-national-chapter-13…

Comments on the proposal are being accepted until Feb. 17. To submit a comment on the proposal, please follow these instructions: http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=USC-RULES-BK-2014-0001-00…

The trustee handling Casey Anthony's bankruptcy says most of the $25,000 he has available to distribute should go to the trustee's attorneys, the Associated Press reported yesterday. Trustee Stephen Meininger said in a final report filed in bankruptcy court last month that $22,000 should be paid to attorney Allan Watkins. In an interview with the Associated Press on Monday, Meininger said that Watkins spent more money than he is receiving investigating false claims. Watkins says the $25,000 was loaned to Anthony by a friend so Anthony could buy back the rights to her life story. Meininger says those rights went to the trustee fund once Anthony filed for bankruptcy. Anthony was acquitted in 2011 of murdering her 2-year-old daughter.