UPDATES IN MICHIGAN FAMILY LAW

Bankruptcy, Spousal Support, and Property Settlements

Today's guest blogger is Christopher McAvoy, a Taylor, Michigan attorney.

A discharge in a Chapter 13 filing does not eliminate any post-discharge child or spousal support payments. These are exceptions to the discharge and if you still owe support after the end of your Chapter 13 case, you have to keep paying until the support order is satisfied. A Chapter 13 may initially affect support payments while the debtor's reorganization plan is worked out.

Support Payments Are A Priority Unsecured Debt

When a debtor files a Chapter 13, he intends to repay some or all of the debt owed to creditors. The ex-spouse, who is owed support and/or a property settlement, is a creditor as odd as that may sound. The debtor comes up with a plan that is proposed to the court and the creditors.  The plan lays out which creditor gets what. Each class of creditor will be treated differently depending on if their debt is secured, like a house loan, or unsecured, like a credit card, or an unsecured debt with priority. The ex-spouse to whom support is owed is a priority unsecured creditor and is paid in full over the length of the repayment plan.  Any support arrears can be cured and brought current as well.

How To Subpoena Social Media

The Electronic Frontier Foundation,  a donor-funded nonprofit dedicated to defending free speech,    privacy, innovation, and consumer rights online, has been hounding relevant law enforcement agencies to get a hold of documents identifying how the government seeks information from social networking sites and how the sites respond to these requests.

Via an ongoing social networking Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the EFF asked for copies of the social networks’ own guides that they provide to law enforcement giving the “how-to” on how to get information about site users.  EFF pulled guides from thirteen companies, including Facebook, MySpace, AOL, eBay, Ning, Tagged, Craigslist and others. The EFF then compared the guides and organized the data in spreadsheets (xls) and pdf. The guides cover the period from 2005 to 2010 and address requests for contact information, photos, IP logs, friend networks, buying history, and private messages. The EFF wasn’t able to secure Twitter’s guide, but they did their own research and found some relevant information on the site to include on their spreadsheets as well. 

Good Parenting | The Ultimate Reward

It's time for a "good news" story. Imagine losing control of your car, going off a steep embankment. At age 67, you cannot climb up--especially not with a broken arm, dislocated shoulder, 3 rib fractures and a broken back. You end up eating bugs and leaves, drinking water from a nearby creek. Imagine this. You find a car near you with a dead man inside. This sounds like a real horror movie. Six days later, you are rescued. Amazingly, you are rescued by your own adult children!