Bankruptcy and Divorce Actions during the COVID-19

If you are looking to determine whether to file a bankruptcy and/or a divorce or what action to file that in, is you want to look at the different ways the estates are looked at and where the marital estate is looked at under the Chapter 208, Section 34.  It does not matter as much in terms who has title to a property. The court is not all interested in Probate and Family Court in the creditors. They are mainly looking at the family; in particularly, the children and the parties in terms of what is fair and an equitable way to have that addressed.

On the other hand, in bankruptcy you want to look at the bankruptcy estate and the trustees in the bankruptcy court.  The title of the parties is much more important and their focus is on not incurring further debt and looking at it under the bankruptcy code for example, Chapter 7 which is looking at a limited date a snapshot and at what is called a liquidation.  There are different facets that have both parts of it in terms of domestic obligations like alimony or child support and those are not discharged through the bankruptcy. There are other parts where the bankruptcy court will look at potentially constructive trusts in terms of sometimes protecting the spouse or soon to be ex-spouse’s possible interest in cars, retirement accounts or things in that nature.

If you have either filed a divorce action or if you are  looking to file a divorce action, same thing, if you have already filed a bankruptcy or you are looking to file a bankruptcy action; which ways you should go first; what are the options; what are the different ways that the courts and the trustees can look at things. You also want to be careful about not making transfers that can be attacked in either Probate and Family Court or in the Bankruptcy Court.  They can end up making your credibility look bad either so you are not an “honest debtor” or the Probate and Family Court looks at it like you are trying to manipulate the situation and not have an equitable distribution.