Bringing Relevance Back to Consumer Bankruptcy

Authors

Nathalie Martin, University of New Mexico - School of LawFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2020

Abstract

The Seventeenth Annual Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal Symposium

This Paper presumes that readers want to make bankruptcy more useful for consumers and for society as a whole. If this is true, we need to ask two questions: first, what do individual consumers hope to get out of the system, and second, what does society hope to get out of the system?

Part I of this Paper discusses the increase in debt over the last two decades, the growing wage and income gap, growing debt inequality and race, and the fall of the CFPB, all justifications for using the bankruptcy system to help ameliorate these problems. Part II discusses particular ways the Code could be amended to become more relevant, including allowing all secured debt to be stripped down and allowing more student loans to be discharged. Part III discusses the main policy justifications for our consumer bankruptcy system and suggests a third system modification that would make bankruptcy more relevant for consumers, namely a hearing or other forum in which consumers could be publicly forgiven of their debts and perhaps even be heard about their financial woes through the bankruptcy court system.

Publication Title

Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal

Volume

36

Issue

2

First Page

581

Last Page

623

Recommended Citation

Nathalie Martin, Bringing Relevance Back to Consumer Bankruptcy, 36 Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal 581 (2020).
Available at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/law_facultyscholarship/804