Since April, a story has been run by a website or twenty with screaming headlines about the Giudices’ debts being wiped away for pennies. Recently, this absurd story has resurfaced with more loud headlines like, “GIUDICES SETTLE $13.5 MILLION DOLLAR BANKRUPTCY BY PAYING $15, 001.03!!!” This seems to have sent many of you into a frenzy! Oh the outrage! All that debt just wiped away! How do people get away with these things?
I would be outraged too, if it were true. But Tamara, I hear you saying. That one site had official court documents! They have proof that this happened! While it is true that the Chapter 7 Trustee’s Final Account and Distribution Report Certification That The Estate Has Been Fully Administered And Application To Be Discharged (TDR) form is floating around the Internet, what is NOT TRUE is the interpretation of the report.
It amazes me that websites owned by people who are licensed to practice law, seem unable or unwilling to read a simple bankruptcy trustee report.
But first, let me very, very briefly explain the most basic concepts of Chapter 7 bankruptcy. People file Chapter 7 bankruptcy asking for the government to protect them from their creditors. Essentially, they go to a court and say hey, we fucked up. We bought a bunch of crap we can’t afford and now everyone is coming after us and we can’t pay them and soon we will be living on the streets eating cream of mushroom soup cooked over small fire in an alleyway. We’re fucking idiots with no financial sense whatsoever. Oh please, government, they pled, give us a do over and we promise to go forth and stop buying Louboutins we cant’ afford. We will even give you some of our shoes back if you want them!
Why does the government do this? Because we live in a nanny state where many people have been conditioned to believe the government should supervise our personal finances. Because the government is super-duper good with finances.
In general, the financial idiots, officially called debtors, (Disclaimer: a small percentage of people who file for bankruptcy must do so because of the insane costs of healthcare in this country can completely bankrupt you at any time if you become critically ill.) go to court and they promise on Dolce & Gabbana and the Bible to tell the truth. They list all of their assets and all of the debts and a trustee takes a gander at things. The goal of a chapter 7 debtor is to obtain an order of discharge. An order of discharge is a court order where a trustee adds up all the assets the debtor has and decides how to distribute the money to all the creditors and a judge signs off on it. After the order of discharge, the creditors take what they can get, and lose the rest of the money they are rightfully owed. The court order eliminates the affected debt and the idiots get a do over. There are tons of specifics and of course any money owed to the government (taxes, school loans, etc) will never be discharged because the government has been given the idiots’ purse strings and they will take first before anyone else gets a dime.
When Joe and Teresa went to file for bankruptcy, they committed fraud. They hid assets and lied under oath to the judge. The government doesn’t like being lied to and that is how the Giudices found themselves preparing to do some federal prison time in the first place. The Giudices were tossed out on their asses, the government stopped considering their bankruptcy case and the feds came calling. They were not allowed to file bankruptcy and their creditors are free to pursue them through any legal means available to be repaid in full.
So back to that standard form Chapter 7 Trustee’s Final Account and Distribution Report Certification That The Estate Has Been Fully Administered And Application To Be Discharged (TDR) that some sites are even posting in full. It’s a government form that is completed anytime anyone files for bankruptcy to explain the outcome. Remember, The goal of a chapter 7 filing is to obtain an order of discharge. And order of discharge eliminates the debt and give the financial idiots a fresh start.
Here is the final order on that document that certain sites keep referring to with an erroneous interpretation:
“The Chapter 7 trustee objected to the discharge of debtors and an order was entered denying the discharge of debtors.”
So what was all of that nonsense about getting a clean slate for $15,001.03? Remember, I said the government always pays itself first with the idiots money? That was the court cost and related fees for wasting the bankruptcy courts time. The government yanked that right out of their bank accounts and informed all of their creditors that Giudice debt hunting season officially opened again in April of 2014.
I have no idea why sites keep running these erroneous stories. I explained this all back in April HERE and HERE. I guess it is good for ratings to keep saying that the Giudices debts were erased when they were not. If you want to be outraged, be outraged that sentencing is taking so long and that Teresa’s attorney keeps giving interviews trying to plant the seeds in the media that the plea deal allows for probation. It doesn’t. The plea deal is very specific. The attorney is allowed to request probation and make his case to the judge. The judge can do anything she wants pretty much. But the plea deal agreed to by both sides is very clear on the amount of time she should serve.
We shall see the fate of the Giudices play out on October 2, 2014. Maybe. Unless it gets pushed again.
TT….the voice of reason…thanks! Your sensible and funny as hell explanation is appreciated.
I think the judge is going to give Teresa some time. Also those creditors are going to be like gangbusters searching for anything they can get and then some.
Yes, you’re not just a pretty face TT!
What amazes me Tamara, is that it amazes you that websites owned by people, who are licensed to practice law, seem unable or unwilling to read a simple BK Trustee report. This is business as usual for said websites. What, you expect them to read past the first sentence? The nerve! Besides, as far as I’m concerned this gives you job security. We come to you because you actually read the entire document(s). And then regurgitate it in a way that is factual and entertaining. Some people actually want the truth, others, not so much. Oh, and leave poor, pitiful Harvey alone (allegedly).
But he’s a lawyer! lol.
On Sat, Sep 6, 2014 at 4:22 PM, Tamara Tattles wrote:
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We’ll Phaedra is a lawyer too so….I find myself not taking those kind of lawyers seriously.
There are lawyers and then there are lolyers; this man, and Phaedra, are the latter.
Maybe these sites are secretly run by a cocktail weenie and his dominatrix wife?
Oops…did I violate the rules there by not naming names? I’m trying to avoid a petty lawsuit.
I would want to get this over with and start serving if I were them. The stress must be KILLING THEM…
btw… this has nothing to do with anything, but I saw Melissa in Shoprite with her kids. She was so skinny. Not a fan, but I have to admit, she looked great.
She really does look great lately.
On Sat, Sep 6, 2014 at 5:21 PM, Tamara Tattles wrote:
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She looks like a whore.
Thank you for explaining this, again.
The headlines were misleading and I’m often slow in thinking.
They should both do time in jail. Terrisa should get no special treatment because she is a mother of for being the poor little woman who just signed the silly papers. The Giudices should have worried about the kids, reputation and their freedoms before they decided to lead a life of crime and prance around with their ill gotten gains, on NATIONAL TV …. .
For people in their position, it isn’t that they cut corners, stretched or broke the law…. It’s that they got caught.
HAHAHA, explained with perfect clarity in a way only Tamara can do, thanks! <3
Great post. I’m still outraged by the video clips of her saying “I don’t know how this happened”…. yeesh.
I’ve been wondering if it’s there’s any real cognitive dissonance and that she’s convinced herself that she doesn’t/can’t understand all this.
After all, “so many” other people have these “troubles” they just aren’t in the headlines. Or that judges sentence (suburban) mothers differently than other criminals. Or that a significant number of the charges stemmed from the bankruptcy deception weren’t hiding her income/products, not simply Joe cooking up fake W2s (if she was less involved in that in that scheme, which doesn’t matter anyway b/c she signed those papers).
The sociopath thing wasn’t far off.
Hi G.,
I honestly believe she is shell-shocked. As a child of 2 Italian immigrants (well, my father came from Sicily) I get the culture. As a child, I remember my father giving things to my mother to sign (i.e… tax returns, nothing dubious), and her just signing… never questioning or reading.
This could or could not be the case with the Giudices… in saying that… How big of a house did these people really need? Greed is not good.
As far Teresa butchering the English Language, I get that part as well. My mother was always saying things wrong, and my friends had to correct me when I mis-pronounced words when I was young (e.g. LYABERREE instead of Library). My parents also pushed us, and we are all well-educated and speak proficiently.
I am not condoning them AT ALL. The husband tells you what to do, and you follow blindly. FWIW… I married a NON-ITALIAN!
Hi DJ. Yeah, a part of this does seem like being in transition culturally. Generationally, it seems like Teresa’s interested only in the upsides of gender justice, the parts that makes her famous and where she get to enjoy breadwinning. Too bad it’s not a one way street in terms of accountability.
Thanks for reminding us of what are the facts, so disappointed the sentencing was pushed back, I will anxiously await D-day. I remember waiting for the Casey Anthony verdict and was she’ll shocked. I think they will both go to jail but, one after the other, no probation for either. The fraud was substantial. Joe was sitting at his desk talking to Teresa about how she was the brand and needed to get out there to make money, poor Joe. What does he do all day? He has truely fallen far.
Shell I hate autocorrect and I apologize for not turning it off.
thank you, that really helped!
TT – you know how appreciative I always am of all the info you provide — but just one small point of clarification …. The government doesn’t get their money 1st – it’s worse than that – they actually don’t allow you to include tax liens or student loans in a chaper 7 bankruptcy. They have to be repaid OUTSIDE of the bankruptcy. You MAY be able to include them in a chapter 13 (restructure) — but not a 7. With love from one armchair lawyer to another…
Had you actually read the post, you would have discovered that exact fact mentioned in my post.
I tried to boil things down to limit the number of comments such as this, but alas I always fail to account for the lack of actually reading more than three sentences before someone attempts to explain to me the concepts I am explicitly writing about.
It’s quite exhausting to try and strike a balance between keeping things short and relevant and providing enough detail so that someone in comments won’t expound further assuming I don’t know my topic.
You’ve really got to lighten up, love. I’m certainly not someone who is consistanly coming in and trying to disagree or cause any type of drama. In reality, I think the exact opposite is usually true. I always try to let you know how appreciative I am of the work you do and the amount of research you put in. I assure you I read the entire post and my comment was simply a matter of clarification, as I said – in an attempt to enhance what you had already broken down. Nothing more…. I apologize if it did not come across as such….
My favorite Teresa’ism is “I just want things the way they use to be” (paraphrased). Yep. Like flashing wads of cash to pay for thousands of dollars for the children’s clothing; furniture… “Everything is paid in cash”. Oh Teresa, we all must pay the piper.
I do feel bad for the kids they have thrust into the middle,of this train wreck. Milania seems to be taking it rather hard as she isn’t old enough to express her feelings in any way other than to call her sisters butt faces etc…
Poor Gia… She must be mortified.
A “small percentage” of bankruptcy claims are medical? It’s the single biggest factor driving Chap 7 & 13 bankruptcies.
Here the American Journal of Medicine in 2009 (w/ 2007 stats): “Using a conservative definition, 62.1% of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical; 92% of these medical debtors had medical debts over $5000, or 10% of pretax family income. The rest met criteria for medical bankruptcy because they had lost significant income due to illness or mortgaged a home to pay medical bills. Most medical debtors were well educated, owned homes, and had middle-class occupations. Three quarters had health insurance. Using identical definitions in 2001 and 2007, the share of bankruptcies attributable to medical problems rose by 49.6%. In logistic regression analysis controlling for demographic factors, the odds that a bankruptcy had a medical cause was 2.38-fold higher in 2007 than in 2001.”
And: this data is 7 years old and much of this has only gotten worse; this isn’t something the ACA fixes, most of these folks have health insurance and middle-class (or higher) incomes.
That said, I’m glad to see this explainer breaking down the Giudice “settlement” in detail, even if it’s something that was well explained by TT earlier in the year. It’s frustrating to see such widespread shoddy reporting elsewhere.
Understood. I wanted to mention it not only b/c medical troubles are not a small percentage of bankruptcies but that it sets the Giudice’s behavior in stark relief. Dina and Teresa’s conversation before the so-called First Responder’s Party presented the notion that “so many” people are in “this kind” of trouble, as if everyone is living off fraudulent mortgages w/ fake documents. Just their unpaid IVF debt is medical.
I’m glad they forfeited their ability to use bankruptcy. I’ve wondered what a rigorous Chap 13 payment schedule would have looked like if they had been in that situation — how much of the debt the judge would have assigned to them given Teresa’s Bravo income. Many folks recently have been surprised that the days of Chapter 7 total discharges are increasingly rare.
The Giudices files chapter 7
On Sun, Sep 7, 2014 at 7:12 PM, Tamara Tattles wrote:
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Yes — I was wondering what if they’d been in a Ch 13 situation. Even though they had massive debt, I’d be curious about the numbers on their Chapter 7 means test that would have liquidated their debt rather than forced them onto a payment schedule. Lots of legal lit now shows judges allowing fewer Chapter 7.
G. the number of medical bankruptcies is quite disturbing; however, the statistics on the subject are all over the map. I agree that they have become the majority of bankrupcies over the years. The Giudices are the focus of this post and their bankruptcy is from spending nearly 10 years ago and does not involve medical bills.Therefore I mentioned medical bankruptcies solely to avoid eleventy billion comments ranting about medical bankruptcies and veering us off topic.
Am hoping the judge has seen Tre’s comments about how she has no idea how this happened, she wished things were like they used to be, and that a lot of people go through this. It is so obvious she is only bothered by all of this because she was caught. I wish they would lose that house. I will need to be medicated if they both do not end up doing time. Come on October!