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Imagine that you have been in dire financial straits. Your credit cards are maxed out, you are having trouble finding a job -- the time has come to talk about a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. In a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, your assets go to a trustee who then uses the money to pay...

Rest assured, this is not the last post we will ever devote to unclaimed property. We are wrapping up this series with neither a bang nor a whimper, but we do have good news.In our last post, we were talking about how much work the state will do to find the owner of...

Most of us hope for a windfall, a healthy infusion of cash that comes free of obligation -- and taxes, of course. There must be an old uncle somewhere who amassed a fortune panning for gold somewhere in the Rockies, someone who has no other living blood relative. You...

April 15th – or there about – is a date that many people dread. It is safe to say that most people do not get excited about filing their tax return. It is a confusing process involving complicated calculations and many different forms depending on your financial...

Under federal law, homeowners who have a portion of their debt forgiven in a loan modification, foreclosure or short sale are required to pay income taxes on the amount forgiven. In some cases, struggling homeowners can end up owing tens of thousands of dollars,...

There are only a few ways the government can take private property. Eminent domain, for example, allows the government -- usually the city or the state, but, really, any government body -- to take privately owned land for public use. The government still has to pay...

An acquaintance told us an interesting story. She grew up in the suburbs in a solidly middle class family. She had older and younger siblings, and she knew that her parents worked hard to make sure they were all well dressed, well fed and indulged to a point just this...

Law students learn how to read statutes, to be careful with conjunctions and punctuation. They learn, too, how to research legislative intent. If there are questions about how to apply a law, for example, you would go back to records of debates or written analyses,...

We may be a little slow to pick up on the coverage of actor Cory Monteith's estate issues. The 31-year-old star of "Glee" passed away in the summer of 2013 from an overdose of cocaine and alcohol. He did not have a will, and that raised some unusual legal issues.If...

We are finishing up our discussion of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration's report to the IRS about the Fresh Start Initiatives. The Fresh Start Initiatives were introduced in 2011 in response to the financial crisis. Taxpayers were having more...