In my consumer bankruptcy practice, I often encounter questions regarding the dischargeability of financial obligations. A
person on the phone or face-to-face, usually at the first meeting or case
evaluation, wants me to draw a quick conclusion and tell from a simplified fact
pattern, if the debt is dischargeable or not. I am often pressed to decline a
quick answer, unless I am presented with a full set of all relevant fact.
Just like in the case below, I was asked to research, if a
mortgage obligation could be discharged, when a couple specifically agreed in
the preceding divorce to maintain a house, to make the mortgage payments, and to allow their teenage kids to live there and attend their school district. I came across the case from the Bankruptcy Court in the
Western District of Pennsylvania that addressed my issue head-on. Obligations
to make mortgage payments and to pay child support coupled with physical
placement of child in mortgaged property make the payments of the mortgage a non-dischargeable
domestic support obligations. In re Price, No 15-07012-JAD, 2015 WL 9957177
(Bankr. W.D. Pa. Oct. 5, 2015)
