DAILY NEWS CONTRIBUTOR

Wednesday, June 14, 2017, 12:00 PM

Bankruptcy proceedings are supposed to be standard and nearly identical for everyone involved, with a magistrate who presides over the proceedings, and a trustee who receives a commission by going after money on behalf of creditors.

The problem is that trustees usually only go after the low-hanging fruit, the easiest money to collect, and so people often just cruise through their bankruptcy process without complications.

However, when the person going through bankruptcy is a celebrity, such as "Dance Moms" star Abby Lee Miller, or a person of public interest like Bernie Madoff, the trustees suddenly become more diligent. They look under every rock for assets to satisfy creditors and possibly to get their names in the newspaper or on TV.

Regular people who file for bankruptcy are usually not subjected to this level of scrutiny, and I think this is a big mistake. We often hear there are two levels of justice: a lenient one for the rich and famous, and a much harsher one for everyone else.

But when it comes to bankruptcy, I've often found the reverse to be true: non-celebrities skate by without a close look, when maybe someone should look a little closer and try a little harder.

For example, I became involved in a recent divorce case at the New York County Supreme Court. The husband had millions of dollars in assets and companies he used to pay his bills, only to file personal bankruptcy a year later. He even divested himself of publicly traded stocks and then had those stocks reassigned back to him after his debts were discharged by the court.

The court saw the fraud, the wife and her attorney saw the fraud, and others involved in the case saw the fraud. But no one referred the matter to the District Attorney's Office for prosecution, or to get the fraudulent bankruptcy set aside by the court so the creditors could get paid.

The only reason the husband could get away with this level of fraud is because he's not a celebrity or person of public interest. We are now a country of selective justice where some people are deemed "deserving" of justice, usually out of a sense of schadenfreude, while others don't always get it.

It's a sad reality, but we need to talk about the elephant in the room so justice will be applied equally to all, as the framers of the Constitution expected, and not only when the media are watching.

Yoni Levoritz founded his own firm, the Law Office of Yonatan S. Levoritz, which later evolved and expanded into The Levoritz Law Group, soon after being admitted to the New York Bar in 2005. In 2008, Levoritz was named Professional of the Year in Matrimonial Law by Strathmore's Who's Who. At the time, he was the youngest attorney to be awarded this honor.

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Link:

Bankruptcy cases show we've become a nation of selective justice - New York Daily News