The Virginia Court of Appeals in Douglas v. Douglas, ___ Va. App. ___, 437 S.E.2d 444, 8 VLW 673 (11/23/93), stopped a husband from using bankruptcy to escape the debt-apportionment obligations of a separation agreement.
It was able to do this by seizing upon the husband's failure to list the wife as a creditor when he sought his bankruptcy discharge of the credit card debt that he had assumed in the parties' separation agreement and divorce decree. A Virginia circuit court is free to disregard the bankruptcy when the plaintiff wife has not been listed as a creditor, the Court declares. This husband failed to prove that his wife had actual notice of the bankruptcy proceedings, and the debt apportionment can be enforced against him by contempt.