Considering the fact that this blog is a criminal law blog, why would I write about Arizona bankruptcy exemptions? The reason is that many people who file bankruptcy in Arizona are unaware of just what they are getting into, and how much trouble is possible, when they file bankruptcy. For an example of this point, see "Bankruptcy Fraud and Lenny Dykstra". Mr. Dykstra is now in federal prison for bankruptcy fraud. 

Bankruptcy exemptions are the property a bankruptcy debtor gets to keep once he or she files bankruptcy, and thus, it would make to keep as much property as possible. That is what bankruptcy lawyers in Arizona call bankruptcy exemption planning. 

Bankruptcy filers seem to think filing bankruptcy is an easy affair without much scrutiny. They also seem to think that it is very easy to conceal assets and that there is not much oversight. That is not the case. For example, many people do not realize that there is a separate department of the United States government that deals almost exclusively with bankruptcy fraud. That department is called the United States trustee's office. The main purpose of the US trustee's office is to find bankruptcy fraud and to punish any debtors who engage in it. When they find somebody guilty of bankruptcy fraud, they can also then refer it to the US attorneys office for federal prosecution.

Unfortunately however, the US trustee's office is much more interested in prosecuting consumers and ordinary Americans for making simple mistakes rather than prosecuting Wall Street big banks for fraud. I have seen very little interest in federal authorities, and not just the US Trustee's office, but in the entire Obama administration in prosecuting Wall Street crimes. For an example of this point, see "In Financial Crisis, No Prosecutions of Top Figures" by the New York Times:

It is a question asked repeatedly across America: why, in the aftermath of a financial mess that generated hundreds of billions in losses, have no high-profile participants in the disaster been prosecuted...

This stands in stark contrast to the failure of many savings and loan institutions in the late 1980s. In the wake of that debacle, special government task forces referred 1,100 cases to prosecutors, resulting in more than 800 bank officials going to jail.

While it is certainly ironic that the conservative Republican Reagan- which prosecuted the S&L fiasco- would be much more aggressive in prosecuting Wall Crimes than the so-called progressive Obama Administration.