A unique partnership between the federal government and the New York City Bar Association is the latest of several initiatives by which attorneys are volunteering to help individuals caught in the kind of financial distress registered by record numbers...

The saddest hour of Mary Smith's day started at 4 p.m. inside a hearing room at U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Sacramento. In just minutes, she would publicly reveal to everyone assembled how deeply mired she is in money problems. Smith, a substance abuse...

A bankruptcy judge has rejected Countrywide Financial Corp.'s proposal to settle accusations that it fabricated evidence used in a bid to foreclose on a home. Judge Thomas Agresti of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Pittsburgh on Tuesday dismissed the...

Mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp., which is under investigation for inflating certain borrowers' fees, acknowledged Tuesday that it has made errors and pledged to take steps to improve its operations. Steve Bailey, chief executive for loan...

Mortgage lenders are abusing the bankruptcy court system by pursuing unjustified foreclosures against struggling homeowners, piling on questionable fees and misstating the amounts owed, witnesses alleged at a congressional hearing on Tuesday. The result...

The number of bankruptcy filings in Hawai'i climbed during April, as overextended consumers sought to get out from mounting credit card debt and avoid foreclosure. U.S. Bankruptcy Court filings in Honolulu totaled 158 in April, about one-fifth more than...

Ventura County consumer bankruptcy filings jumped 122 percent last year as lenders toughened refinancing requirements, area bankruptcy attorneys say. County residents filed 1,285 bankruptcies in 2007, up from 580 the previous year, according to data...

Consumer bankruptcies continue to rise, as more families facing money problems give up on the economy. Bankruptcies rose 47.7 percent nationwide in April, from the same period a year ago, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute. The institute used...

Georgia continues to be one of the nation's bankruptcy leaders. Georgia ranked No. 2 nationally for its rate of consumer bankruptcy filings in the first quarter of the year. The bankruptcy courts statewide processed 12,981 consumer filings during the...

As the number of foreclosures surges, people buried under mountains of debt are seeking relief by filing for bankruptcy in ever increasing numbers. It's the option of last resort for those who see no other way out, say bankruptcy attorneys, whose...

Alabama's personal bankruptcy rate was the third-highest in the nation in 2007, and bankruptcy lawyers in Birmingham think the situation could worsen this year with problems with home loans rise. The American Bankruptcy Institute said this week there...

Despite strict regulations to discourage bankruptcy, the number of filings last year in Sacramento nearly doubled in a tidal surge that outpaced growth around the nation and left court officials expressing astonishment. In total, 17,397 people and...

ankruptcy filings rose by one-fourth in Pennsylvania last year, as rising monthly mortgage payments overwhelmed already shaky household finances and tight credit markets hurt struggling businesses. In many areas, the housing bust piled on to people and...

Analysts estimate 1.1 million to 1.4 million Americans will file bankruptcy this year as tough filing rules get trumped by tougher economic woes. The 2008 projections are way below the more than 2 million bankruptcies in 2005, when a tidal wave of cases...

Utah's economy may be shrugging off the negative effects of what many believe is a nationwide economic downturn, but for the state's residents who recently have filed for bankruptcy, the recession already has arrived. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for Utah...

Unbowed by the Senate’s rejection of the measure, consumer groups are vowing to fight on for a bankruptcy change they claim is the most targeted remedy to the foreclosures spiking around the country. Senators last week voted 58-36 to strip the measure...

The burden of oversized mortgages and credit-card debt is proving to be overwhelming for an increasing number of consumers, as rising gas and food prices squeeze household incomes. That is showing up in bankruptcy filings that surged 22 percent for the...

The law that drastically changed the Bankruptcy Code in October 2005 was supposed make it tougher to escape debts and reduce the number of filings. It worked, for a time. Although the law made filing for bankruptcy more complex and expensive, the number...

In 2005, the credit industry sought, and Congress delivered, a bankruptcy reform bill that is now the law of the land. Reform advocate Todd Zywicki, a law professor at George Mason University, said the bill was aimed at "rebalancing the system by...

Robin Atchley remembers one moment in her family's ordeal with Countrywide Home Loans as the absolute low point: the afternoon she told her four children to start packing up everything in their bedrooms. It was time to leave home. Robin Atchley and her...

NOBODY wins when a home enters foreclosure — neither the borrower, who is evicted, nor the lender, who takes a loss when the home is resold. That’s the conventional wisdom, anyway. The reality is very different. Behind the scenes in these dramas, a...

For years, cash-strapped individuals who sought to keep their homes by filing for bankruptcy blamed a handful of causes: heavy credit card debt, loss of a job, hefty medical bills. Add one more to that list: higher-than-expected mortgage payments. And it...

Troubled mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp. is attempting to block a federal inquiry into the way it treated bankrupt borrowers in 300 cases in Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania, according to a published report Friday.rnThe Justice Department...

Bankruptcy filings have surged 22 percent in Massachusetts this year, as more people are unable to afford their rising mortgage payments or refinance their homes to pay bills, according to court filings and bankruptcy attorneys. Massachusetts filings in...

Americans filed for bankruptcy in growing numbers in February, buckling under the combined weight of rising energy prices, a weakening housing market and sky-high personal debts. An average of 3,960 bankruptcy petitions were filed per day nationwide last...