The North Carolina Bankruptcy Information Blog

Following the worst financial downturn since the Depression of the 1930s, men and women of the middle-class have found themselves profoundly affected by an economic meltdown that’s quickly pushed many into poverty. Widening unemployment paired with shrinking government safety nets means one unexpected and unfortunate incident—a sudden layoff, debilitating injury or illness, a missed mortgage payment—can mean a person’s life is instantly transformed from “happy-go-lucky” to the brink of homelessness or worse.

In fact, according to a new article on the state of the shrinking middle class in America, “As foreclosure and unemployment rates have swelled to epidemic proportions in the past two years, the ranks of the American homeless have grown: the number of homeless families rose 4 percent in 2009, and then 9 percent last year, a pair of new reports show.…

If you’re reading this, odds are you may be suffering through  a tough financial time. Yet, what might make you feel a bit better about your current ordeal is the knowledge that you’re not alone. Millions of average Americans just like you are facing a shared financial circumstance as they struggle to stay afloat in the wake of this decade’s Great Recession—facing foreclosure, job insecurity, and, in some cases, insolvency.

In the series, Our Great Recession 2.0, we’ll delve into some of the more unique stories of this decade’s unprecedented economic downturn, allowing you to see familiar faces and dire places people are going in order to handle our collective financial meltdown head-on.…

If A Wealthy Developer Can Walk Away From The Mother Of All Underwater Mortgages, Why Can’t You?

Rachel Beck, national business columnist for The Associated Press, asked this very question in a recent article upon finding that heavily capitalized developer Tishman Speyer Properties was able to simply “walk away” from 11,232 Manhattan apartments because it couldn’t pay its mortgage, under the guise of “good business,” while at the same time, in the same country, Rick Gilson, a college custodial supervisor in South Dakota, resists walking away from the mortgage on his mobile home, fearing he’ll be considered “a deadbeat.”

As Beck found, “Those two borrowers face the same financial dilemma: Their mortgages far exceed the values of their properties.…