In light of the first same-sex marriages in New York State comes news that the United States Department of Justice has announced that it would stop opposing same-sex bankruptcies if the couple is legally married. It is a branch of the Justice Department called the U.S. Trustee, which represents the administrative branch of government in all bankruptcy cases.

Married couples can file a joint petition in bankruptcy for a single filing fee. Consolidation of cases for married couples saves administrative cost, attorney fees, and can promote domestic harmony. This benefit has, until recently, been denied by some courts for same sex married couples.

A federal bankruptcy court in Los Angeles ruled Monday that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional in relation to a case involving a gay couple who filed for bankruptcy in February.

The ruling was signed by 20 of the 25 judges in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles.

Metro Weekly reports that Gene Balas and Carlos Morales, who were legally married in California in 2008, filed for bankruptcy protection under Title 11 of the U.S. Code. The couple had been struggling financially after dealing with serious illnesses and unemployment. The United States Trustee moved to dismiss this case, citing DOMA.

Not really, according to California bankruptcy attorney Douglas Jacobs. The greatest effect on your FICO score (your credit) is the number of late payments on your accounts. More late payments – worse scores. Certainly there are other factors, and a bankruptcy may have the immediate effect of lowering the score.

But why do you care? That’s the truly important question.

First of all, if you have months of missing credit card or house payments, your score is none too good at the moment. Bankruptcy won’t hurt it that much. And it will give you a fresh start – a clean slate to build your credit back from where it is and in far less time than it takes struggling to pay off those credit cards.

Bankruptcy filers need to disclose all debts, including loans from family members.

This may be hard for some people. Perhaps you don’t want your relative to get notice of the bankruptcy as a creditor because you are ashamed. Maybe you thought you could repay your relative with tax refund.

However, repayment to a relative is called a preference, where you preferred one creditor over the others. If you repay a relative within a year before filing, the  trustee has one year to sue the relative to recover the repayment and redistribute the money to all your creditors pro rata.

One solution is to can repay the relative and wait a year. Also, there's nothing in the bankruptcy code that forbids someone from repaying a loan after bankruptcy, even though it's been discharged. However, you will have to list the loan in your paperwork, and the person who loaned you the money will get notice of the bankruptcy.

Many people worry about where they will live after they file for bankruptcy and surrender their (usually far under water) house. They’ve heard horror stories about people with bankruptcies on their credit being unable to rent. But things aren’t as bad as they fear.

Don't look at traditional large apartment complexes, advises Maryland bankruptcy attorney Brett Weiss. Many will, indeed, reject applicants with a recent bankruptcy on their credit.

Much more likely to rent to you are individual landlords. They are usually far more concerned about you, the individual, than about your credit. A good job and first and last month’s rent often are sufficient to satisfy these landlords.

The best bet, however, is usually a “Lease With Option to Buy,” or LWOB. This is a special form of rental, typically involving three provisions in addition to the usual rental clauses:

Now that President Obama has ordered the Justice Department to no longer enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, it's an open question as to whether same-sex married couples can file joint bankruptcy.

One of the advantages of filing jointly is that many attorneys who use a flat fee charge the same rate for a joint filing as an individual filing. However, an unmarried couple will usually incur the fee of two individual filings.

Illinois bankruptcy attorney Andy Miofsky says that same-sex couples should at least try. And I personally know of at least one bankruptcy attorney in the L.A. area who is moving forward with a joint filing for a same-sex couple.

Miosfky correctly points out that DOMA remains on the books, and Courts are free to uphold and apply the restrictive definition of an opposite sex 'spouse' to existing cases. Also nothing prohibits creditors from raising the issue.

The government can garnish up to 15 percent of after-tax income to collect on defaulted student loans -- and they don't need a court order to do so. So says Boston bankruptcy attorney Nichols Ortiz.

However, you are always guaranteed to be left with an amount per week that is 30 times the federal minimum wage, which is now $7.25 per hour. If you have other debt troubles and are getting garnished for other debts, the maximum total amount that can be taken from you is 25 percent of your disposable income.

Dealing with a student loan garnishment is tough, but there are strategies for dealing with it. One option is to rehabilitate the loan by arranging to make payments. Another option is to consolidate out of the defaulted loan. Some people even file Chapter 13 bankruptcy cases to stop the garnishment, and get a three- to five-year reprieve from their student loan problems, though this only makes sense if one has other debt problems.

An IRS garnishment of your salary, more accurately referred to as a wage levy, occurs if you neglect to pay taxes or refuse to file a tax return entirely. The IRS can garnish from 30 to 70 percent of your paycheck.

Yes, you read that right.

If you're behind on your taxes, by all means contact the IRS to work out some kind of payment plan. This isn't one of those things that will just go away if you stick your head in the sand. You have to be proactive, or you may end up with a levy before you know it.

There are certain steps the IRS must take before they can start the levy, but if you're ignoring mail from them (e.g., refusing to pick up certified letters), they can start the levy without you knowing.

There's a common misperception that tax debts can't be discharged in bankruptcy. That's not entirely true. Taxes that were due more than three years ago may be dischargeable in either Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy. But you must have filed your tax return for that year (or those years) in order for taxes to be dischargeable.

Although student loans are virtually impossible to discharge in bankruptcy, there are other options to dealing with student loan debt overwhelm.

Attorney Kevin O'Keefe reports that lawyers from the Department of Justice who normally fight student loan discharges gave a presentation with some useful suggestions on dealing with student loans repayment.

Two common (temporary) solutions are deferment and forbearance. Forbearance is a temporary modification of the payment terms, while deferment is a suspension of your obligation. Nothing goes away, but your payments stop for a time.

If you do default, your loan can be rehabilitated, or even refinanced or consolidated, which brings the loan back out of default status. Before you miss a payment, contact your student loan provider or servicer to find out all the options.

Congress intended for Social Security income be heavily protected from creditors both outside and inside bankruptcy. The same protections also mean that any Social Security income doesn't need to be included in calculating a debtor's disposable income that goes toward funding a Chapter 13 plan, according to a recent court decision.

As Missouri bankruptcy attorney Wendell Shirk notes, the Eighth Circuit Bankruptcy Appellate Panel recently ruled that it is not bad faith to hold back Social Security income from plan payments under the "best efforts" test -- in other words, how much money is left over after expenses.

As Shirk points out, creditors heavily promoted the 2005 bankruptcy reform legislation that includes this exception, so they will have to live with the fruits of their efforts.