Bankruptcy works on notice of the filing,  to the creditor who is bound by the automatic stay to stop collection.  Sounds simple, right?  Well, it got more complicated with BAPCPA, the supposed bankruptcy “reform” act.

Take a look at any credit card bill.  It has an address on the bill to which you send the payment.  Dollars to doughnuts, there is a second address somewhere on that bill for “customer support”, “billing inqueries”, or “correspondence”.  That’s the address you want in your bankruptcy schedules.

I take issue with my colleague David Leibowitz’s recent post on whether creditors can call after bankruptcy where he  says that it is the payment address that provides notice to the creditor.  Section 342(c) as amended by BAPCPA  provides that effective notice of the commencement of the case is notice to the correspondence address provided by the creditor.

This was added at the behest of creditors who found it inconvenient to honor the automatic stay and wanted to hedge their liability for continuing collection actions despite the bankruptcy filing.

So, your ability to seek damages for violation of the automatic stay may depend on the address you provided for the creditor.  Thus my repeated charge to clients:  bring me a bill for each creditor.  Let’s get it right.