Can I keep my tools or business equipment? For a self-employed person, this is an important question when considering bankruptcy. Keeping your equipment is critical to keeping yourself employed in your trade. Fortunately, North Carolina provides an exemption for tools of the trade. In some cases, this exemption can very helpful for retaining tools, equipment, professional books, and other such items.
When a personal injury happens, it is often a major event in a person's life. In addition to physical and emotional impacts of an injury, there are frequently financial consequences. With major injuries, an award of compensation may be designed to at least partially relieve a long-term financial burden. For a person owed money in compensation for an injury, that money may be one of the person's most valuable assets. Fortunately for North Carolina residents filing bankruptcy, North Carolina law provides a generous exemption to protect that compensation.
Tax-advantaged college savings plans are a relatively new financial tool, but are used by many families across North Carolina to save for the expense of a college education. If contributions have been made consistently, a 529 plan may have grown to be a substantial asset. For individuals who have come into troubled financial times, the effect bankruptcy may have on these savings can be concerning. Outside of bankruptcy, a desirable feature of a 529 plan is that the contributing parent remains in control of the deposited funds.
Social Security retirement benefits and disability benefits enjoy broad protection in bankruptcy. The most commonly used protection for benefits is the fact that social security income is excluded by statutory definition from income available to repay creditors. This means it does not count in the means test for chapter 7 eligibility, and is not considered as income used to determine the amount to repay unsecured creditors in a chapter 13 bankruptcy.
This post is part of our uncommon exemptions series, and discusses the Professionally Prescribed Health Aids Exemption under North Carolina law. A concisely worded exemption, NCGS 1C-1601(a)(7) simply provides for exemption of "[p]rofessionally prescribed health aids for the debtor or a dependent of the debtor." This exemption is one that many people do not need, but those who do need it find it to be quite important.
This week, we begin a series of blog posts discussing the uncommon exemptions in a North Carolina bankruptcy. As a bit of definition, I am going to use the term uncommon fairly generously. There are also what I would call "exotic exemptions" that few would ever encounter. An example of an exotic exemption is that for a Medal of Honor pension under 38 U.S.C. 1562(c). Instead, we target the several property exemptions are used occasionally, but not to the point of ubiquity.