CASES IN REVIEW
to pay the redemption amount over the term of the plan. Any alleged injury to the city, due to either a decline in tax revenue as a result of damage to the sheriff ' s sale process or the debtor ' s failure to pay property taxes in the future, was purely speculative. In re Wilson,--- B. R.----, 2016 WL 7450468( E. D. Pa., Dec. 28, 2016)( case no. 2:15-cv-6385).
Chapter 13— Confirmation of plan— Treatment of secured claims— Mortgage creditor provisions: A Chapter 13 plan may require a mortgage creditor to send periodic loan statements to the debtor. Such a requirement does not modify the creditor ' s rights in violation of the anti-modification provision in Code § 1322( b)( 2), as requiring a creditor to send monthly statements is not a right but an obligation, and one that is inextricably bound to a debtor ' s ability to cure mortgage defaults, one of the primary objectives of Chapter 13. And even if the obligation could somehow be stretched to qualify as a right, its ministerial or procedural nature would exclude it from qualifying as the kind of right the statute was intended to protect from modification. In re Sperry, 562 B. R. 1( Bankr. D. Mass., Dec. 8, 2016)( case no. 1:15-bk- 14583).
Chapter 13— Confirmation of plan— Treatment of unsecured claims— Unfair discrimination— Student loan debt: In a long opinion stressing that student loan debt in the U. S. had tripled to more than $ 1.3 trillion, the court declared that student loans were unique and should be separately classified as the Bankruptcy Code permits. Accordingly, the court confirmed a Chapter 13 plan providing that the debtors ' student loan claims would be paid in full without postpetition interest before payment of other general unsecured claims, where prior to filing bankruptcy the debtors had paid down their non-student loan unsecured debts from $ 73,885 to $ 12,192 over 47 months, while not paying down their student loan debts. Declaring that Chapter 13 debtors with student loan obligations faced a quagmire, the court said that, without separate classification, debtors might face a higher debt burden after bankruptcy than before. The court also respectfully disagreed with other courts ' holdings that, without more, the nondischargeability of student loans was an insufficient reason for discriminating in favor of student loan claims. In re Engen, 561 B. R. 523( Bankr. D. Kan., Dec. 13, 2016)( case no. 2:15-bk-20184).
Chapter 13— Entitlement to discharge: Granting the Chapter 13 debtor ' s discharge, the court said that it would be inequitable to deny discharge in this unique situation, where, although the debtor failed to make all postpetition direct payments to her mortgage creditor, the creditor had agreed to a mortgage modification and subsequently reported to the bankruptcy court that the loan modification had been finalized, and that the creditor agreed that the debtor was " otherwise current on all
© National Consumer Bankruptcy Rights Center www. ncbrc. org
38 CONSUMER BANKRUPTCY JOURNAL Spring 2017 National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys