Hi my name’s Mike Greiner, I’m a bankruptcy attorney with the Financial Law Group located in Warren, Michigan and I’m here to talk to you today about domestic support obligations and bankruptcy.
Domestic support obligations are non dis-chargeable in bankruptcy, so don’t even ask about it. One of the bigger concerns that I’ve seen though is where the other spouse or the ex spouse comes in and is concerned about the facts that child support that’s owed for example, it would be discharged when someone files a bankruptcy. That type of debt is non dis-chargeable in bankruptcy and there’s nothing that the ex-spouse can do to get rid of that.
You as the ex-spouse who is owed this money, you do not need to do anything to make sure that that debt gets protected as your former spouse is going through their bankruptcy. That type of debt is non dis-chargeable under any circumstances. It does not require any kind of law suit or any kind of action on your part to make sure that it does, that it does stay non dis-chargeable. There are certain kinds of debts that are created that through bankruptcy that might require something action on your part to make sure that they stay non-discharged- for example: I have 1 client who as part of the divorce decree. The spouse who filed for bankruptcy was going to be responsible for certain tax debts. My client was concerned by the fact that she was being chased by the IRS, so she ended up paying the tax debt and then ended up suing this other person, the ex-spouse who is filing bankruptcy to try to collect on that tax step-down that she paid.
The attorney for the spouse who filed bankruptcy believed that, that debt would be discharged in the bankruptcy. I do not believe it is, but either way when there is a circumstance like that, what I would suggest is that we actually take steps to make sure that the court order gets entered stating clearly that the debt is not discharged to the bankruptcy case. There is a time limit during which that needs to be done and it’s typically within two months after the first meeting of creditors or sometimes in some cases, even a month after the first medium creditors. So there’s a very limited of time during which you have to take steps. If you’re concerned about the destructability of certain kinds of domestic support obligations, feel free to give me a call. I offer free consultations at my office. We’re located here in Warren at 12 and Hoover. My phone number is 586-693-2000 and my website is financiallawgroup.com.