|
The inspiration for ConsumerBankruptcyCounseling.info, a project of Tides Center was an article that appeared on the front page of the October 23, 2005, edition of the New York Times entitled When Health Insurance Is Not a Safeguard. In this article, reporter John Leland outlines how the family of seven-year-old Zachery Dorsett was able to use personal bankruptcy to avoid some of the horrible effects of being underinsured for their son's chronic and financially ruinous immune system disorder.
Recognizing that the so-called "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005" (the "2005 Act") was going to make access to bankruptcy more difficult for persons like the Dorsett family (and after making a donation to the Dorsett family of personal funds) partners at McGrane Greenfield LLP organized a working committee including retired Northern District of California Bankruptcy Judge James Grube, former California Insurance Commissioner and Retired California Appellate Justice Harry Low, and Professor William Hutton of Hastings Law School along with members of the corporate bankruptcy bar in the Northern District of California to implement the program first laid out in what was then called the "Zachery Dorsett Project."
The essential ingredient of ConsumerBankruptcyCounseling.info, a project of Tides Center is this website, which provides fast, free and readily understandable bankruptcy counseling, resulting in issuance of the necessary certificate allowing access to bankruptcy under the 2005 Act. Beyond that, however, and as is more fully stated in the Zachery Dorsett Project précis, consumers utilizing ConsumerBankruptcyCounseling.info, a project of Tides Center's referral panel of consumer bankruptcy lawyers may hope to receive grants in aid, both for attorney's fees and costs as well as other "fresh start" needs.
The point of ConsumerBankruptcyCounseling.info, a project of Tides Center is simple: charity begins at home. The corporate bankruptcy bar wishes to ameliorate the negative effects of the 2005 Act on consumer access to bankruptcy and help those in most need who must otherwise utilize bankruptcy to truly obtain a meaningful "fresh start" through the use of carefully administered but nonetheless quite old-fashioned charity.
|
