October 23, 2023
Partner Jonathan Horne was quoted in a Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly article on the ruling of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a case where a Chapter 7 debtor could be denied discharge of a judgment debt because of his failure to keep adequate records regarding rental properties he owned, offering the bankruptcy bar a lesson on how to handle such clients.
Jonathan said in most cases in which a debtor has not maintained contemporaneous records, the debtor can obtain bank statements to document past transactions and satisfy disclosure obligations, noting “But where a debtor has been dealing almost exclusively in cash, the absence of contemporaneous records makes satisfying the disclosure requirement more difficult."