The evolution of the fresh-start policy in Israeli bankruptcy law.

• Author: Efrat, Rafael

I only want you to know that there are a lot of people like me who fell into financial problem not due to their own fault. These people are depressed, humiliated and have lost their dignity. They cannot look in the eyes of their relatives. What will happen when they will be arrested? Will they be able to continue to function and live with their relatives after it? ... Is the country looking for more bankruptcies and/or suicides? ... I love my wife, my children, my grandchild, the world, please let me continue living ..., do not cause me to....(1) A fresh-start policy in bankruptcy provides the honest but financially troubled individual some form of financial relief in an attempt to provide him with an opportunity to productively reintegrate into the economy and society. While some countries today provide broad financial relief to individuals who resort to bankruptcy protection, many countries have retained a largely limited as well as punitive fresh-start policy.

This Article explores the evolution of the fresh-start policy in Israel. While it briefly examines the attitudes and practices adopted towards financially troubled individuals historically in the Jewish tradition, it focuses on tracing those attitudes and practices to the modern day State of Israel. It demonstrates that the attitudes and practices historically held by Jewish communities towards financially troubled individuals have progressively evolved from an obsession with protecting the dignity and freedom rights of the individual debtor to preoccupation with preserving morality in the credit market and neutralizing perceived opportunistic behavior on the part of debtors.

However, most recently, bold legislative and judicial steps suggest that a new philosophy towards financially troubled individuals may be emerging in Israel. This philosophy may not only promote and safeguard fundamental tenets of human dignity and freedom, but it may also produce a fresh-start policy in Israel that is more consistent with the original thinking on this matter in the Jewish tradition.

1. INTRODUCTION

   In the early 1990s, Israel experienced a massive increase in imprisonment orders being issued and executed against financially troubled debtors who were routinely disqualified from the bankruptcy system. Partly in response to the plights of those individual debtors, the Israeli legislators passed a bankruptcy reform law in 1996 that aimed at revolutionizing the fresh-start policy for financially troubled individuals.(2) It indeed marked the first ideological shift in Israeli history from a relatively conservative view to a more liberal view of the fresh-start policy.(3) One of the purported goals of the reform law was to provide a meaningful opportunity for responsible and honest financially troubled individuals to successfully re-establish their place in society free from overwhelming debts.

   While much has been written and discussed in academic circles about the bankruptcy fresh-start policy in the United States, very little attention has been given to the experiences of financially troubled individuals in the bankruptcy context in other countries. This Article attempts to begin to bridge that gap by examining the historical evolution of the fresh-start policy in Israel. An appreciation of the historical evolution of the fresh-start policy in the Israeli bankruptcy law may not only provide an important insight into the evolutionary process of Israeli laws in other important fields, but it also may provide valuable comparative perspectives for the evolution of the fresh-start policy in other countries.

   One theme that is dominant in the historical evolution of the fresh-start policy in Israeli bankruptcy law is the paternalistic orientation of the Israeli government. This orientation to a large extent shaped the traditional formulation of the fresh-start policy.(4) This paternalistic attitude is reflected in the bankruptcy context in the system's heavy-handed and punitive (both civil and criminal) approach to treating the bankrupt,(5) while at the same time providing him with generous welfare benefits and a broad level of property exemptions.(6)

   The Israeli government's paternalistic orientation is also reflected in the rationale the government advanced for restricting debtors' access to bankruptcy. On several occasions opponents to a liberalization of the fresh-start policy in the legislative body contended that it would not be in the debtors' best interests to file for bankruptcy and that the limited access to bankruptcy is justified as a way of preventing debtors from harming themselves.(7)

   Moreover, government paternalistic orientation manifested itself in the active role the government undertook and continues to undertake in the debtor-creditor relationship. To that end, the government has undertaken the de facto responsibility of collecting unpaid debts in the marketplace.(8) The government perceives that it has a duty to engage in the business of collecting debts even on behalf of private creditors as a way of instilling morality and integrity in the commercial system of the country.(9) The government had done so by subsidizing the costs of the debtor's prison system and by fully subsidizing the costs of the Official Receiver, which is a governmental agency partly engaged in what one would expect creditors to do: investigate the reasons for the financial failure of the bankrupt and vigorously search for his concealed assets.(10)

   While government officials have continuously complained about the rising costs of administering the bankruptcy system, they have not considered turning over the enforcement role to the creditors. Instead, they have placed the blame of cost overruns on the bankrupts by severely curtailing their access to the system.(11)

   In essence, the government approach to the bankruptcy system has caused the bankruptcy regime to become a system of government vs. debtors as opposed to creditors vs. debtors. Indeed, throughout the bankruptcy process we witness that the government takes the lead role in collecting funds from the bankrupts, whereas the creditors passively sit on the sideline while delightfully accepting the bankruptcy estate's distributions, generated primarily through the labor intensive work of the government.(12) This active role of debt collector, which the government has undertaken in the bankruptcy system, has caused the government to become practically an interested party in the debtor-creditor relationship. Because of this development, the government's objectives have become aligned with those of the creditors, which has resulted in the government taking a biased position detrimental to the bankrupts.

   To put the Israeli fresh-start policy in perspective, this Article will first briefly address the origin of the fresh-start principle in general. The Article will then shift its focus to the value of debt-repayment in the Jewish tradition and the practices historically undertaken by various Jewish communities with respect to debtors' default. Before beginning to address its evolution in Israel, this Article will review the fresh-start policy during the pre-statehood years under the British Mandate authority. The next section will trace the evolution of the rather conservative and punitive fresh-start policy in Israel during its first thirty years of existence. The last section will address the changes in the Israeli bankruptcy law during the last twenty years that have, in a way, revolutionized the fresh-start policy by re-acknowledging the fundamental and important interests of financially troubled individuals.

2. THE ORIGIN OF THE FRESH-START PRINCIPLE

   In order to appreciate the unique nature of the contemporary fresh-start policy in general and the one in Israel in particular, it is necessary to have some knowledge of the way the fresh-start policy has evolved historically.(13) The historical evolution of the fresh-start policy in England is particularly important since England is the country where the modern fresh-start policy was first developed.(14) Furthermore, since the Israeli bankruptcy law is largely patterned after the English Bankruptcy Act of 1914,(15) and since the decisions of the English courts were very influential in Israel until 1980,(16) an understanding of the historical evolution of the fresh-start policy in England is especially important.(17)

   England adopted its first formal bankruptcy regime in the sixteenth century.(18) Bankruptcy schemes in other parts of the world, however, had existed long before then.(19) While some ancient legal devices provided some relief to debtors,(20) most institutions adopted an extremely punitive treatment of bankrupts.(21)

   While medieval England did not employ the same harsh measures towards its insolvent debtors,(22) it nonetheless had no concern for the bankrupt's welfare.(23) During the medieval period, individual debtors in England who were unable to repay their debts were simply imprisoned until their debts were somehow repaid.(24) However, the debtors' ability to circumvent imprisonment,(25) as well as the perceived inequities in the existing race-based collection remedies,(26) gave rise to the first bankruptcy law in England in 1542.(27) This piece of legislation and subsequent bankruptcy legislation adopted during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries were all exclusively creditor oriented.(28) For example, the bankruptcy process could only be initiated by creditors(29) and only against merchants.(30) Furthermore, the bankruptcy process retained many of its punitive elements.(31) Lastly, the various bankruptcy laws did not include a provision for forgiving the debtor his prepetition debts.(32)

   The first trace of the debt-forgiveness concept was introduced in England in 1705 when Parliament passed a provision making it possible for cooperative and honest debtors to get a discharge of their prepetition debts.(33) Although some contend that the...