The 50- to 60-page (or more) document one files with the bankruptcy court is fully titled: Voluntary Petition, Schedules and Statements. This is because it features a section called

"Voluntary Petition," and it also has Schedules and Statements.

Luckily, lawyers are into the whole brevity thing. So we just call the whole shebang a "petition," the way you'd refer to say, the United States House of Representatives of the 112th United States Congress as "The House," or Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope as "Star Wars."*

Now among the many schedules in the petition is Schedule I, which lists income. The problem we encounter is that the other Schedules (A through H and J) do not follow I's helpful lead; they don't match the first-letters of their respective subject matters. I is for income--that's good enough for me. Yet, Schedule B, for example lists one's personal property. How is that useful? While the practitioner can readily connect any schedule-letter to its subject, the casual participant wants for a mnemonic to better familiarize with the schedules.

Since I don't care to make one, I do the next best thing and employ forced initialisms.

Thus, the subject of Schedule B--personal property is referred to instead as bersonal broperty. The exemptions stated on Schedule C become Cexemptions, with a soft C. Schedule F features unsecured debts, which sound better if they're Funsecured debts. Schedule H features co-debtors, whom we consider Ho-debtors.

As a bonus, our office fancies British pronunciation of "schedule." Hence, we frequently direct a client's attention to her bersonal broperty shed-ule or reference the effect of Funsecured discharge upon Ho-debtors. It causes occasional confusion, but I think it's for the best.

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*Hon. Palpatine gives this analogy in explaining definition of "petition" under 11 USC 101(42). See United States v. Lucas, 12 B.R. 94 (1997).

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