Fulton, CA Bankruptcy Law Firms & Lawyers

If the 401(k) and IRA has been set up and funded properly, then those will be exempt. Generally stocks and bank accounts are not fully exempt. A person will typically utilize a "wildcard" exemption on these accounts, but the amount of wildcard you can allocate will depend on the value of your other assets.

In a Chapter 13, but not in a Chapter 7, a debtor may seek to have an entirely undersecured lien on their home "stripped."  The procedure is different in the different districts, but the concept is the same, and all are based on a watershed case: In In re Zimmer, 313 F.3d 1220, 1223-1224 (9th Cir. 2002), debtors applied to the court through an adversary proceeding for a judgment determining a junior lienor’s interest to be wholly unsecured, reasoning that the junior lien was unsecured because a senior lien exceeded the value of the property.  After an exhaustive analysis of opinions throughout the country, the Ninth Circuit agreed with the debtors.