As We Forgive Our Debtors : Bankruptcy and Consumer Credit in America

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

• ISBN13: 9781893122154
• ISBN10: 1893122158
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-06-01
• Publisher: Lightning Source Inc

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

Teresa A. Sullivan is Vice President and Graduate Dean, The University of Texas at Austin. Elizabeth Warren is Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law, Harvard University. Jay Lawrence Westbrook is Benno C. Schmidt Chair of Business Law, The University of Texas at Austin.

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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