http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_Abuse_Prevention_and_Consumer_Protection_Act
As of October 2005, those people who filed for bankurpcy were required to pay  ¡  §much higher fees to bankruptcy attorneys, who  ¡K. raise[d] their rates by as much as 100 percent. That [was] to account for the increased liability the new law impose[d] on them, which  ¡K mean[t] more time verifying and filing client documents.  ¡  ¨
Moreover,  ¡  §[c]onsumers who . . . [sought] to file bankruptcy in the . . .months [thereafter] also [were expected to ] experience delays at the bankruptcy courts, which ha[d] been overrun . . . as debtors scrambled to file under the less stringent requirements of the old law  ¡  ¨ as 2005 was coming to a close.
http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/17/pf/debt/bankruptcy_law/
CITIBANK & U.S. CREDIT MANAGEMENT DOUBLE TEAM ME
In late 2005, my own credit management firm, U.S.Credit Management of Texas, went belly-up within two months of the 2005 Act going into effect. (Because that scandalous Texas firm declared bankrupcy and pocketed my money before the end of 2005, I was out of 8500 dollars that should have been used in that year to pay down my credit card debt with various creditors.]
By the way, I had HAD to contract with U.S.Credit Management of Texas in 2004 after Citibank had unilaterally lowered my credit limit arbitrarily  ¡Xi.e. without contacting me at all  ¡X in winter/spring of the year before (2003) and then began to charge me penalties for their fraud.
NOTE: YES, I TOOK my claim against Citibank to the ATTORNEY GENERALS of TEXAS, Florida, New York, South Dakota, Kansas, and the USA. All of them agreed that what Citibank had done was unfair but they did not even slap them with a fine. Such was the pro-business, pro-banker and pro-fraud Washington climate during the 108th and 109th Congress.
Citibank did worse than this to me, though.
Apparently in 2006, Citibank decided it wasn  ¡  ¦t going to get the fraudulent money back from me under the eyes of various attorney generals, so it sold my debt to a bottom feeder credit collection agency. I will collect Bottom Feeder No. 1. However, before undertaking this sale (involving probably pennies on the dollar), Citibank (1) added more fraudulent penalties to my total and (2) created still other fictitious debt for me on credit cards which I had closed out in the late 1990s.
Next, Bottom-feeder No. 1 contacts me and wants to make a deal. I give them 500 dollars and then they refuse to make a deal.
NO MORE DEALING WITH BOTTOM FEEDING CREDIT COLLECTORS
After that, I decided not to deal with these bottom feeding credit sharks at all. Alas, THAT DEBT was sold to Bottom Feeder #2, who then contacted my mother the next year saying she  ¡  §could pay off my debt at a reduced amount if she sent in 1000 dollars  ¡  ¨. She did this without contacting me. Then that Bottom feeder Credit Collector #2 upped its demands.
I told mom never to give these irrreputable firms any money--till they immediately negotiate away all penalites and the fraudulant charges first  ¡X i.e. prior to making an offer to settle my debt.
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