EthicsWalk addresses
spiritual care as an ethical enterprise.
It explores why relationships between
spiritual care providers and those
they serve need protection, and
examines what that protection entails. PlainViews invites
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Personal
Bankruptcy: A Matter of Money,
Not Morality
The three children of Arnold
and Sharon Dorsett are losing
their family home in Chapter
7 bankruptcy. [1] Arnold works
90 hours per week earning $68,000
annually. They are frugal shoppers
and have good health insurance.
But it’s not enough. Their
eight-year-old son’s chronic
illness is costing them $12,000-$20,000
a year out-of-pocket. Of the
myriad emotions engulfing parents
of a chronically ill child, the
one dominating the Dorsetts is
shame. As with most Americans
in bankruptcy, shame fuels desire
to keep their bankruptcy secret
from friends and relatives.[2]
Fifty percent of families in
bankruptcy have serious medical
problems.[3] Medical bills, job
loss, and divorce account for
87% of filings for families with
children.[4] Acting on the myth
that carefree consumerism reflected
in credit card defaults prompts
people to seek bankruptcy relief,
Congress bowed to the credit
industry and enacted draconian
new bankruptcy provisions that
became effective on October 17.[5]
You have met and will continue
to meet many families like the
Dorsetts. How can your presence
as a spiritual care provider
ease their shame and support
their struggle to regain financial
as well as physical and spiritual
health?
Practical tips:
1) Examine your attitudes about
debtors in bankruptcy versus
everyone else you know who has
a mortgage, car payment(s), student
loans outstanding, medical bills,
and monthly credit card balance –they
are all debtors.[6] What distinguishes
the former from the latter? Bad
moral character, bad money management,
bad health, bad weather, bad
employment termination, bad divorce
judgment, or just bad luck?
2) Encourage your health care
institution and health care colleagues
to be generous in working out
individual payment plans with
patients rather than insisting
that every patient present a
credit card upon receipt of services.
Most people work diligently to
pay off debts incurred directly
to a provider and attempt to
meet them even before making
their credit card payment. Health
care providers need patients!
Both need payments applied directly
to care providers, not siphoned
as interest to multinational
financial institutions.
3) Copy the credit counseling
information in footnote 7. [7]
Give it to patients whose financial
worries become part of their
discourse with you. [Do not yourself
attempt to be a credit counselor,
or loan or give money: tend your
professional boundaries!]
4) Consider how soliciting credit
card pledges to synagogues, churches,
mosques and other charitable
organizations affects individuals
whose financial life is precarious.
Are such groups true to their
ethics of care and service when,
in order to boost their own immediate
revenues, they encourage donors
to pile more debt onto their
credit cards?[8]
5) December Gift-Giving Mania
has descended. As providers of
spiritual care, offer your patients
and colleagues ways to celebrate
love and appreciation with gifts
of self and service rather than
presents purchased on plastic
credit.
6) Recognize that each of these
suggestions applies as much to
you and your family as to your
patients and colleagues.
We are all debtors. The margin
separating us from those in bankruptcy
is only as thick as our luck
on a particular day. What would
you need from friends and professional
creditors to be restored to wholeness
should your luck falter? Congress
this year gutted all compassion
from the constitutional provision
[9] to regain solvency through
bankruptcy. What can you as a
person of faith do to extend
grace to those seeking a financial
fresh start?
[1] The New York Times,
Sunday October 23, 2005, “When
Even Health Insurance Is No Safeguard,”front
page.
[2] One wonders if they could have saved their home and other personal assets
by filing Chapter 13 which is bankruptcy reorganization for real, living, breathing
people, offering the same opportunities as Chapter 11 for corporations. Fewer
people file Chapter 13, which is more complicated for counsel but provides
better relief for many employed debtors.
[3] The New York Times, Monday October 24, 2005. Op-Ed. Professor
Elizabeth Warren, Harvard Law School.
[4] Warren, Elizabeth. The Two Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are
Going Broke, Basic Books, 2003, p. 81.
[5] Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA)
[6] A study released October 12 says seven of ten low and middle income households
report using their credit cards as a safety net to pay for car and home repairs,
basic living expenses and medical bills. The Plastic Safety Net: The Reality
Behind Credit Card Debt in America, Center for Responsible Lending, 10/12/05
at www.responsiblelending.org
[7] www.nacba.com; www.naca.net//resources.htm; www.consumerlaw.org
[8] For the pledger, a credit card is a very different kind of transaction
than cash. Paying cash means the money is accounted for, in total, immediately.
Using a credit card means the transaction is not complete until the credit
card company is repaid not only for the gift but for all other charges on the
statement including monthly interest accruals. Most people do not pay off credit
balances monthly. Those with least disposable income tend only to pay the minimum
charge. If someone pledges $2,500 on a credit card with a 21% annual percentage
rate and makes only the minimum payment (usually 2% of the balance owed –but
these numbers are increasing in 2006 –or $20 whichever is greater), it
will take 40 years and 8 months for the original $2,500 to be repaid. The interest
will be $11,894. [$14,394 total of which only $2,500 benefited the religious
organization] If that same person gives an additional $20 per month on the
same card (and makes no other charges on it and continues paying the monthly
minimum), that person would have a perpetually increasing balance and would
die owing the credit card company more than the pledges fulfilled to the recipient.
Wouldn’t everyone benefit by keeping pledges cash (check) only? Adapted
by Peter C. Fessenden, Standing Chapter 13 Trustee, District of Maine from Personal
Financial Choices, Trustee Education Network, 2001.
[9] U.S. Constitution, Article I. Section 8
Anne Underwood has an undergraduate
degree in religious studies, a
master’s degree in rural sociology
and a mid-life law degree obtained
after working over a decade as
a college administrator. She has
mediated for the Maine family courts
since 1983. Currently she serves
as an advisor to the ethics commissions
of ACPE, APC, the CCAR (Central
Conference of American Rabbis),
and NAJC, and consults with a variety
of Protestant faith communities
on issues of power, fair process,
and congregational conflict management.
Her articles on mediation and restorative
justice have appeared in the ACPE
News, The APC News and on the ACPE
web site. Articles on clergy accountability
and judicatory processes are published
by the Alban Institute and The
Journal on Religion and Abuse.
A
chapter, “Clergy Sexual Misconduct:
A Justice Issue,” appears in Body
and Soul: Rethinking Sexuality
as Justice-Love
, Marvin Ellison
and Sylvia Thorson-Smith, editors,
The Pilgrim Press, 2003.
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