Description
Mortgages, student loans, credit cards: debt is a ubiquitous component of daily life in Canada. But our attitudes toward debt, and the people who incur it, are complex.
Trustees at Work explores the role bankruptcy trustees play in determining who qualifies as a deserving debtor under Canadian personal bankruptcy law. When debt becomes unmanageable, the bankruptcy and insolvency system provides relief though not to everyone. The architects of the system have restricted access to this benefit by developing methods to distinguish deserving from undeserving debtors. The idea of a deserving debtor is woven throughout bankruptcy law, with debt relief being reserved for those debtors deemed deserving. The legislation and case law invite trustees to assess debtors based on their pre-bankruptcy choices, but in practice, trustees evaluate debtors based on how cooperative the debtors are during bankruptcy proceedings. Using insights from the sociology of emotion, Anna Jane Sa
