not true, exemptions vaery from state to state.
I suspect that most of the original credit applications have in microscopic print “This agreement can be changed unilaterally at any time by the lender or its assignees.”
My bad, I thoguht you were talking about filing bankruptcy, it looks like your comment might have something to do with insurance claims. If so, accept my appologies.
Strange, maybe, but isn’t it basically education, albeit, after the fact? Some might see this as “Big Business” doing the job that “Public Education” should have done in the first place.
you’re not suggesting that insurance companies are treating these high risk insureds more favorably, are you? My premiums wouldn’t come close to paying to replace my property, but then again I don’t bundle my premiums with a bunch of other folks and then loan the money or invest it, whatever. If I did, I would be a insurance company.
as has been mentioned, these paid credit counselors are largely owned by financial insitutions. Here, let us get you into debt and then you pay us to show you how to avoid doing it in the future. Nice.
Sorry… I’m in the Western US and your point escapes me.
Now, why is that? Could it be that the new laws make their job more difficult? And if that’s the case, wouldn’t it be a natural reaction to characterize such laws in a negative way, regardless of their overall impact on the lending industry? I’m not an attorney, but it sure seems like they would react just like any other guy whose job all of a sudden becomes less of a slam-dunk.
OK, but I was asking about the credit counseling requirement. What if, as a condition of getting the loan, the applicant has to agree to credit counseling in the event of a default. Wouldn’t that sort of make the “forced contract” issue moot?
preemptive reply – “owned” should have been “funded.” Although that will likely chnage.
preemptive reply – “owned” should have been “funded or owned.”
Well, in a way, I suppose I am. It seems to me that the risk of insuring property in a location with a certainty of eventual destruction is not only high, but absolutely predictable. I’m no insurance expert, but it just seems to me that some properties do not or should not qualify for “insurance” by definition: One that will be destroyed, sooner rather than later.
Now, if insuring those properties anyway, despite the certainty of loss, is “favorable treatment”, then so be it. What I’m certain of is that the insurance companies are still collecting (admittedly higher) premiums for these properties, which beats collecting no insurance premiums, and the rest of us have to make up the difference between what they have collected and what they must pay out when the claim is filed.
I guess where I’m going with this is the old “personal responsibility” thing – if I build a house on a known, active earthquake fault, for instance, and sure enough an earthquake takes me out, I shouldn’t expect a “bundled” group of other folks to bail me out… and out… and out…
No, the new law hardly impacts my job at all. I no longer deal in run of the mill consumer bankruptcy. In the relatively rare instance that I represent an individual, it’s a $5,000 retainer just to get an audience. A new level of sophisitication is nothing we can’t deal with. The same goes for most of the bankruptcy attorneys I know. With the kind of work we do, we bill by the hour, so if something takes longer it costs more, and the cases we deal with aren’t going anywhere. I cited the opinions of other bankr. attorneys (albeit it anecdotal) to suggest that those who understand the law best think it foolish. I think you would find that were the bench to openly comment on it, their reactions would be the same.
It’s not the case.
. . . unless you contracted with them (or with a third party with whom they also contracted) to do so. If you find the whole concept of dispersing liability repugnant, self insure. I fail to see what this has to do with personal responsibility – is it not responsible to insure? Besides, as I alluded earlier, it’s not like your premiums are sitting in bankers box down at the insurance company till disaster strikes. Insurance co’s have actuaries to evaluate risk, if you don’t like sharing in that risk – self insure – but you’ll probably kick yourself in the event you do suffer a loss.
You may have missed my point, or I may have failed to make it clearly in the rush to catch up to this thread. It’s sort of a side issue, but still an important one, I believe, that simple survival skills, when it comes to finance, could be taught in the schools well before a person has to face the real issues in the real world, one of which is the fact that lenders are in the business of lending, another of which is that money is their product, and the last of which is that they can and should advertise their product as effectively as any other business… until such time as it is made illegal.
So, uh, do you think people are surrounded by great oppertunities to make untold thousands more than they already are and don’t take them out of sheer pigheadedness? Do you really think that making more money is a matter of walking out and getting a better job?
If nobody built their houses on known, active earthquake faults, you’d have a lot of trouble finding stuff to buy with all this money you so easily aquire because there’d be nobody to work the Port of Oakland- one of the biggest Pacific ports. In fact, the nation would be thrown in to chaos as one of it’s largest economies took up mass-relocation.
Thank you. Being neither an attorney nor one those who understand the law best, I was genuinely curious and didn’t intend to come off as presumptuous.
Sorry to be defensive. Clearly, I don’t speak for everyone. Also, there are a lot of good changes in the new law, but they are relatively minor compared to the scope of the “bad” overhaul.
In rereading the post you replied to, I caught that I wrote “albeit it,” can that be the new highbrow version of “gotcha ya”?
I do see your point(s), and I do self-insure… now. I suppose my attitudes are formed by having lost more than one home and a business as a result of natural disasters (earthquake / wildfire), and having had to make the decision whether or not to re-build in the same locations, knowing the likelihood of the same thing happening again. It was a very difficult decision, as the locations were desirable for all the right reasons. I decided to relocate to an area less prone to such events, and one of the factors in the prevailing view was the “fairness” angle – Is it “right” to do this, to stay and re-build, knowing that great cost will be involved to make me well, and that others will have to pay most of it?
Complicating the matter was the fact that the events took place in California, where the availability of certain types of catastrophic coverage and their rates are mandated and provided by the state, and a large portion of the claims are ultimately paid for by the taxpayer.
Sure, I miss the ski slope views and the sunset glistening off the lake, but I feel I’ve only now made the truly “responsible” decision.
Uh, no and yes.
Or, they could self-insure.