Each year, millions of individuals and families across the country struggle to pay their bills. Often financial distress follows on the heels of other unanticipated events such as job loss, divorce, substantial out-of-pocket medical expenses and natural disasters. Bankruptcy may provide these debtors with the opportunity for a fresh start. The Bankruptcy Code grants financially distressed debtors certain rights that are critical to the proper functioning of the bankruptcy system as a whole. However, bankruptcy debtors, lacking both financial resources and exposure to the bankruptcy system, often do not have the ability to protect the integrity of the bankruptcy system and preserve the bankruptcy rights of consumer debtors more generally. The National Consumer Bankruptcy Rights Center (NCBRC) was created to fill that vacuum.
NCBRC provides assistance either by working directly with debtors’ attorneys or by filing amicus briefs in courts throughout the country. An amicus curiae is an entity or person, not party to a case, who volunteers information to assist courts in deciding matters before it. Appellate cases are normally limited to the factual record and arguments from the lower court case under appeal, and the debtors’ attorneys focus on the facts and arguments most favorable to their clients. Where resolution of a particular case may impact consumer debtors throughout the country, amicus curiae briefs are a way to introduce those broader concerns, so that the larger legal effects of courts’ decisions will not depend solely on the parties directly involved in the case.
NCBRC also strives to impact the national conversation on bankruptcy laws and debtor rights by increasing public awareness and education and by attracting media attention to the important issues involved.