Personal Bankruptcy
On November 17, 2008, Cox and her husband declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy due to the failure of the husband's home construction business, listing $3.5 million in debt and $650,000 in assets. The bankruptcy also affected the money won for the schools on Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader. Fidelity Investments, the investor charged in creating a fund for the donor schools, donated the winnings back to Fox in December 2008 from the schools, placing the prize in a limbo that would not benefit anyone.
On August 19, 2009, protesters representing deaf and blind children picketed the office of bankruptcy attorney Gary W. Brown in Newnan, over his efforts to take control of the winnings. According to Brown, the winnings belong to the bankruptcy estate, and should be used to pay back creditors.
In October 2010, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge W. Homer Drake signed off on an agreement to split the $1 million winnings into two equal parts: one half for creditors and the other half for the three state-run schools for the blind and deaf.
Read more about this topic: Kathy Cox
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or bankruptcy:
“A man who has nothing which he cares about more than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the existing of better men than himself.”
—John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)
“A woman’s whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world: it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul on the traffic of affection; and if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless—for it is a bankruptcy of the heart.”
—Washington Irving (1783–1859)