Under This New Bankruptcy Law?
Q: I heard the law change was basically bringing back debtor's prison. Will they actually put people in prison for their debts under this new bankruptcy law?
A: - The new law comes very close to effectively repealing former bankruptcy laws protections for individual debtors. As such and on its own terms, its a pretty terrible give-away to credit card industry and related financial debt providers who mostly wrote the statute's language without engaging in hyperbolic insinuations of the sort above. But that the purpose and effect of the new law will be to deny a discharge to most who were eligible to receive one in the past an so in to allow creditors to continue to resort to whatever debt collection remedies they would have had but for a discharge does not mean that there is anything in the new federal statute that brings back debtor's prison. -The changes are terrible, one-sided, short sighted, and don't recognize the insurance aspect of bankruptcy, but they do not reintroduce a "debtor's prison" insofar as there are no new incarceration penalties. It'll probably seem almost as bad as incarceration for folks who need bankruptcy relief but can't get it. On the other hand, people who need but can't get relief may just move off to join the underground economy