Inability to discharge all your debts as they come due

Usage examples of bankruptcy.

An adjudication in bankruptcy is no longer requisite to the exercise of bankruptcy jurisdiction.

In 1867 the debtor for the first time was permitted, either before or after adjudication of bankruptcy, to propose terms of composition which would become binding upon acceptance by a designated majority of his creditors and confirmation by a bankruptcy court.

Thus it happens that the judge almost always appoints as assignees those creditors whom it suits the bankrupt to have,--another abuse which makes the catastrophe of bankruptcy one of the most burlesque dramas to which justice ever lent her name.

There is cause to arraign the bankrupt on a charge of wilful bankruptcy.

Bayard went down on that day of storm and the dark waters of defeat and bankruptcy closed above him, there had been stretched one hand to save.

It held that the House of Representatives had overstepped its jurisdiction when it instituted an investigation of losses suffered by the United States as a creditor of Jay Cooke and Company, whose estate was being administered in bankruptcy by a federal court.

The first bankruptcy law, passed in 1800, departed from the English practice to the extent of including bankers, brokers, factors and underwriters as well as traders.

Since Congress may not supersede the power of a State to determine how a corporation shall be formed, supervised and dissolved, a corporation which has been dissolved by a decree of a State court may not file a petition for reorganization under the Bankruptcy Acts.

But Congress may impair the obligation of a contract and may extend the provisions of the bankruptcy laws to contracts already entered into at the time of their passage.

It may also empower courts of bankruptcy to entertain petitions by taxing agencies or instrumentalities for a composition of their indebtedness where the State has consented to the proceeding and the federal court is not authorized to interfere with the fiscal or governmental affairs of the petitioner.

Also bankruptcy legislation must be uniform, but the uniformity required is geographic, not personal.

Thus during the first 89 years under the Constitution a national bankruptcy law was in existence only sixteen years altogether.

Later cases were to settle further that the enactment of a national bankruptcy law does not invalidate State laws in conflict therewith but serves only to relegate them to a state of suspended animation with the result that upon repeal of the national statute they again come into operation without reenactment.

State court was without power to proceed with pending foreclosure proceedings after a farmer-debtor had filed a petition in the federal bankruptcy court for a composition or extension of time to pay his debts.

United States to stay proceedings in State courts except where such injunctions may be authorized by any law relating to bankruptcy proceedings.