Lanigan & Lanigan, P.L.
831 W. Morse Blvd., Winter Park, Florida 32789
407-740-7379
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Podcasts, The Law
Click to Listen. Right Click Audio as it’s playing to download to your device. Roddy Lanigan of Lanigan and Lanigan in Winter Park, Florida, talks to you in a new YouTube video for a moment about an exciting topic in immigration law: immigration reform and it’s being debated right now in Washington and most likely will come into effect this year. It (immigration reform) most likely will affect you if you’re in this country and are a foreign national. Go ahead call me make an appointment so we can discuss how these interesting changes in the law may affect you and your status in this country. President Obama has said that comprehensive immigration reform will be a top priority for his second term. Roddy Lanigan, practices primarily in the areas of corporate law, litigation, bankruptcy, asset protection, corporate reorganization, white collar criminal, and immigration. If you’re a foreign national, it’s important to know now what the laws are and to have a working knowledge of the ever changing laws regarding your status and how it relates to the immigration reform laws being changed now. Immigration Reform Proposal One of the proposals which was first reported by USA Today, would create a new visa program for an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States and create a path for them to become legal permanent residents within eight years. Don’t wait to find out information that will affect your future, your business and your family, consult with Roddy Lanigan to discuss your...
Podcasts, The Law
Click to Listen. Right Click Audio as it’s playing to download to your device. Winter Park Florida business and civil litigation lawyer Eric Lanigan talks about what happens when a single person or a married couple faces wage garnishment due to a judgment. There’s a video that talks about the issue and some of the challenges and options for addressing the challenges on the LaniganPL YouTube video channel called, “Florida Wage Garnishment of Individual or Married Couple.” How to Handle Wage Garnishment Eric talks about garnishment in a range of difficult situations. Where you have a single debtor, unmarried, no children who has a judgment against them. Or you have the married couple but the judgment is against both of them. Maybe one spouse was the borrower and the other spouse signed as a guarantor. Or many times as most people know the bank will require both the husband’s and the wife’s signature in order to make a loan. In those situations, you don’t have the head of household exemption, you don’t have the tenancy by the entireties exemption. In the married situation, you can have the head of household situation, but if both of the parties work then the one who makes the the least amount their account can be garnished. But you don’t have the tenancy by the entireties exemption if the judgment is against both the husband and the wife and that’s a critical exemption in Florida. People often come in and they say, “well what do I do now? With a judgment against my wife and I, should I just transfer these assets...
Bankruptcy, Podcasts
Click to Listen. Right Click Audio as it’s playing to download to your device. Sometimes it’s said that the bankruptcy code is filled with landmines. And to a certain extent that’s true. Florida bankruptcy lawyer Eric Lanigan wants to go over one of those landmines and that’s the IRA exemption that’s usually expected in bankruptcy. You can learn more about the issue in a video on the LaniganPL YouTube Channel entitled: “IRAs May Not Be Safe in Bankruptcy.” The general rule of thumb, Eric explains, is that the IRAs are exempt. And almost anything you read will say, ‘don’t worry about your IRA because it’s exempt from the claims of creditors in bankruptcy.’ But if you read the code though, what the code says is that if an IRA has received an IRS determination letter then there is a presumption that it is exempt. And every lawyer knows that there is a lot of danger in that word presumption because it immediately tells you that there is some ways that it might not be exempt. The Case for IRA Exemption Review And a good example of that is in a recent case involving a Merrill Lynch IRA and there’s approximately four or $500,000 dollars in this IRA. And the bankruptcy trustee in that particular case went into a boilerplate language that Merrill Lynch has a customer sign when they open an IRA. And they found in it language that to the extent that if that customer were to owe Merrill Lynch money on any other brokerage account for instance if there was a margin call on a brokerage...
Bankruptcy, Podcasts
Click to Listen. Right Click Audio as it’s playing to download to your device. Eric Lanigan explains the challenges that those who file bankruptcy face when there are pre-existing judgments involved. This issue is tackled in the Lanigan & Lanigan video channel on YouTube called, “Bankruptcy Pre-Existing Judgment – Winter Park.” Another trap that everyone has to be concerned with is the pre-existing judgment. Now the good news is that the debt is discharged in bankruptcy. However any lien resulting from the judgment remains in force. Now the first question is what is a lien? And a lien is very simply the legal right to take property from you in order to satisfy a pre-existing debt. So in bankruptcy, even though the debt itself is automatically discharged the creditor still has the right under the lien to obtain property from you. And all property is liened simply by recording the judgment. And virtually all judgments are recorded. So if you have a judgment you can virtually be assured that it’s been recorded and a judgment lien exists. Now the good news the lien can be easily removed or as we say in bankruptcy avoided by simply the filing of a motion to avoid a judicial lien setting out the legal criteria. And virtually every time the court will enter an order avoiding the judicial lien the end result being then that both the debt is discharged and the lien is gone and removed from the public records. Winter Park bankruptcy attorney Eric Lanigan and Roddy Lanigan handle a wide range of economic legal issues including foreclosure, mortgage workouts, business reorganizations...
Bankruptcy, Podcasts
Click to Listen. Right Click Audio as it’s playing to download to your device. Many times in the midst of a bankruptcy, people who are filing bankruptcy remember or discover a joint account of which they’re a part. However, the other party listed on the account is not filing for bankruptcy. There are many different accounts in which this can occur and it’s completely innocent on part of the person filing. This complex issue is discussed in a YouTube video on the LaniganPL channel called Resulting Trust Bankruptcy – Co-signers on Accounts or Loans. “Very often our client comes in and says that there’s an account that they’re on which they didn’t honestly recall,” said bankruptcy attorney Eric Lanigan. “For example, a couple who was on the title to their son’s car, but who didn’t make any of the payments and had no involvement in the car. All payments made were made by the son. The only reason that they were on the title is because at the time the car was purchased the boy was a minor.” Lanigan said. “Therefore, the parents had to be listed on the title. But they don’t have any money in the car and they never used the car. But the car is included in the bankruptcy that they file.” The other example is bank accounts,somebody might have a bank account and they list another family member, a father mother sister or brother jointly on the bank account so that if something happens to them there’s someone to step right in who has authority to write checks to pay bills as they...
Bankruptcy, Podcasts
Click to Listen. Right Click Audio as it’s playing to download to your device. Dischargability of federal income tax liabilities is one of the common issues that Winter Park, Florida bankruptcy attorney Eric Lanigan and Roddy Lanigan deal with in Florida bankruptcies. Eric Lanigan has a video on the Lanigan and Lanigan, P.L., YouTube channel “Dischargability of Federal Income Tax Liabilities – Florida Bankruptcy.” Most people come into the office believing that if it’s a federal income tax liability that it is not dischargeable. And that is not correct. “As a very simplified rule we say if the tax liability is old, it’s dischargeable,” Eric Lanigan said. “If it’s new it is not dischargeable. Well that then begs the question what constitutes an old tax liability? Two Criteria for Discharging Tax Liability “This is an area that can get very complicated so I’m just giving you a general overview here,” Lanigan emphasized. “But generally you can say that if it is a). more than three years from the year in which the tax liability accrued…for instance if I have a tax liability for the year 2007. Now I didn’t file that tax return until April 2008 but the year in which the tax liability accrued was 2007. Now has it been more than three years since that tax liability accrued.” Second Criteria Lanigan said that the second criteria is whether it has been more than two years since that tax return was filed or since the tax in question was assessed? Has it been more than two years since the tax was filed? Use the same example of...
