As We Forgive Our Debtors Bankruptcy and Consumer Credit in America

by Sullivan, Teresa A.; Warren, Elizabeth; Westbrook, Jay Lawrence

• ISBN13: 9780195070040
• ISBN10: 0195070046
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1991-04-25
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Bankruptcy in America is a booming business, with hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans filing for bankruptcy each year. Is this dramatic growth a result of mushrooming debt or does it reflect a moral decline that permits the middle class to evade their debts? As We Forgive Our Debtors addresses these questions with hard empirical data drawn from bankruptcy court filings. The authors of this multidisciplinary study describe the law and the statistics in clear, nontechnical language, combining a thorough statistical description of the social and economic position of consumer bankrupts with human portraits of the debtors and creditors whose journeys have ended in bankruptcy court. Book jacket.

Author Biography

About the Authors:
Teresa A. Sullivan is Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas.
Elizabeth Warren is William A. Schnader Professor of Commercial Law at the University of Pennsylvania.
Jay Lawrence Westbrook is Andrews & Kurth Professor of Law at the University of Texas.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 3
The Basic Information--A Little Law and a Few Numbers	p. 15
The Debtors
The People	p. 49
A Financial Portrait of People in Bankruptcy	p. 63
Debtors at Work: Occupations and Industries	p. 84
The Entrepreneurs	p. 108
The Homeowners	p. 128
Women and Bankruptcy	p. 147
Medical Debt and Bankruptcy	p. 166
Credit Card Junkies	p. 178
The Repeaters	p. 191
Can These Debtors Pay?	p. 199
Laws, Models, and Real People	p. 230
The Creditors
The Other Players	p. 273
Commercial Lending	p. 282
Reluctant Creditors	p. 293
The Consumer Credit Industry	p. 302
Conclusion: Bankruptcy and the Consumer Credit System	p. 328
Data and Methods	p. 342
List of Tables and Figure	p. 355
Index	p. 359
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