Our law firm Phillips & Thomas, LLC continues its winning record in student loan litigation with two recent cases decided in Federal Court in Kansas in July 2025. The first case was tried before the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Kansas, and the Court’s ruling was handed down on July 16, 2025.
Continue reading
Our law firm, Phillips & Thomas LLC, was recently interviewed by Tara S. Bernard, a financial journalist at the New York Times, in relation to student loan discharge issues in bankruptcy. The article is entitled “Discharging Student Loan Debt Is Supposed to Be Easier Than Before,” and appeared the Times on August 9, 2023.
Continue reading
In early October 2022, Phillips & Thomas LLC successfully litigated a student loan adversary proceeding that arose out of a Chapter 7 bankruptcy case in the District of Kansas. The case was In Re Vasko (Adv. No. 21-6020, District of Kansas, June 7, 2021). The facts were as follows.
Continue reading
Our Johnson County, Kansas law firm located in Leawood is a veteran-owned business. One of our attorneys and owners, George Thomas, had a prior career as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps before attending law school and becoming an attorney. He attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) on a Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC) scholarship from 1986 to 1990.
Continue reading
When you file a bankruptcy case, one of your responsibilities is to make sure you have disclosed all your creditors. If a creditor is not listed on your case, the debt owed to that creditor will not be discharged; other problems can also arise in your case from a failure to disclose debts and assets. One of the most frequent questions we hear from our clients is, “I’m just not sure exactly who I owe money to! How can I find this out?”
The “means test” Form 122A in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy case is surrounded by myth, flawed perceptions, and misinformation. For many people it can be a scary prospect. You hear a lot of conflicting talk in the media about the means test, and everyone seems to have an opinion about one thing or another. Some people say it means one thing, and some people say it means something else. A book says one thing, a website says another. Everyone’s an expert, right? Wrong.
Many clients call our office after they have received the dreaded paperwork indicating that they have been sued by their credit card company. This process normally begins when someone gets a civil summons or a lawsuit petition delivered to their door, or to themselves personally. We understand that you may feel overwhelmed and confused. But although it can be a traumatic experience at first, realize that you have the power to take back control of your life. In this article we will explore what these collections lawsuits mean and what you can do to respond in an effective way.
In a recent case litigated by our law firm Phillips & Thomas LLC, a Kansas bankruptcy court discharged $234,046.00 of student loans in one of our bankruptcy cases. The court found that our debtors had satisfied the “undue burden” standard with regard to most of their student loans and therefore entered a discharge for the majority of the student loans in question.
The case in question was adversary proceeding In Re Murray (Murray v. ECMC), Dist. of Kansas, Adv. No. 15-6099 (Filed Dec. 8, 2016). In addition to the large amount of student debt that was wiped out, the outcome is significant because it demonstrates the fact that the Tenth Circuit (like many others) permits the partial discharge of student loans: as the Court said, “[in the Tenth Circuit] discharge of student loans is not an all-or-nothing proposition.”
The official bankruptcy forms and schedules underwent significant changes to their appearance, layout, and presentation on December 1, 2015. It was one of the most important overhauls of the forms in their history.
What does this mean for you? Or does it make any difference at all? We will explore some of the answers here.
You want your case to be a success, and we want your case to be a success. And to ensure that this happens, I wanted to go over some tips and pointers that experience has shown to be some of the best ways to make sure that success happens.
I’ll start with the pre-bankruptcy phase of things, then talk about things to be aware of during the case. And then I’ll talk about things to be mindful of after your case. OK?
All right. Here we go.
Kansas City Bankruptcy And Criminal Case Defense Information 