As summarized in the March 2018 issue of the American Bankruptcy Institute Journal, ABI’s Consumer Bankruptcy Committee has recently issued several recommendations and made several observations regarding the treatment of student loans under the Bankruptcy Code, codified in Title 11 of the United States Code.
First, the Committee intends to fashion a program
In the student loan market, servicers play a critical role. These entities maintain account records regarding borrowers, send periodic statements advising borrowers about amounts due and outstanding balances, receive payments from borrowers, allocate those payments among various loans and loan holders, answer borrowers’ questions, report to creditors and investors, and strive to prevent default by
The Republican Congress’ ongoing effort to overhaul the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, as embodied in the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act, may yet extend a helping hand to struggling student loan borrowers. On March 8, Sen. Richard (“Dick”) Durbin (D-Ill.), the Democratic Minority Whip, introduced an amendment to
The Senate’s latest banking bill primarily focuses on overturning large chunks of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Somewhat unexpectedly, on March 8, the Senate’s Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee approved the addition of two bipartisan proposals that provide help to some of the nation’s forty-four million student loan borrowers to
State in the House: Bill Passed Committee, but Vote Not Scheduled
Introduced by Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), the Promoting Real Opportunity, Success, and Prosperity through Education Reform (PROSPER) Act cleared the Committee on Education and the Workforce of the United States House of Representatives on December 13, 2017. It did so despite claims by Democrats—and
On February 16, a judge in the Eastern District of New York denied a defendant collection law firm’s motion to dismiss, finding that its collection letter violated the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act because it did not clearly set out that interest and fees may accrue on the “current balance.”
The FTC has just issued its annual report, the Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book, aggregating data on the 2.68 million consumer complaints that it received in 2017. This number is down from a peak in consumer complaints during 2015 – 3.04 million complaints – and last year’s total of 2.98 million.
According to the FTC’s
A district court in Maryland has ruled that a debt collection agency did not violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1692 (“FDCPA”)’s mini-Miranda requirement by failing to disclose its identity in a call initiated by the plaintiff in response to a debt collection letter.
Background
Consumer plaintiff Rhonda Price-Richardson defaulted on
In a new article detailing its Stats for December 2017 and Year in Review, WebRecon presented data showing a slight decrease in the number of consumer litigation lawsuits filed in 2017 compared to other years. We previously reported on WebRecon’s consumer litigation statistics for May of 2017, where we found the number of new
As we previously reported, Mick Mulvaney, acting interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, announced a change to the CFPB’s governing philosophy to focus on quantitative analysis to guide the Bureau’s future regulatory and enforcement actions. As an example of this new emphasis on hard data, Mulvaney pointed to the fact that almost