The LAW & LAWYERS Blog

If you’re a consumer bankruptcy lawyer or a consumer who has filed for bankruptcy protection in the past year and a half…or a counselor for a credit counseling agency…it will probably come as no surprise to you that a recent GAO study raised some questions about the usefulness of the pre-bankruptcy filing credit counseling requirement.

It isn’t that credit counseling can’t be useful, but that the requirement that someone planning to file for bankruptcy protection complete a credit counseling briefing doesn’t kick in until that person sets out to file bankruptcy.  By that time, circumstances are usually dire, and credit counseling agencies have indicated that most people who come to them at that point have no realistic options outside the bankruptcy process.

Don’t look for any changes in the near future, though; the report only recommended tracking outcomes for those completing credit counseling in anticipation of bankruptcy.  The study found that the post-filing, pre-discharge debtor education course was helpful.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 1st, 2007 at 4:09 pm and is filed under Bankruptcy Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.