Associates Commercial Corp. v. Rash, 520 U.S. 953, 12 (1997)

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964

ASSOCIATES COMMERCIAL CORP. v. RASH

Opinion of the Court

The Fifth Circuit considered the replacement-value standard disrespectful of state law, which permits the secured creditor to sell the collateral, thereby obtaining its net fore-closure value "and nothing more." See 90 F. 3d, at 1044. In allowing Chapter 13 debtors to retain and use collateral over the objection of secured creditors, however, the Code has reshaped debtor and creditor rights in marked departure from state law. See, e. g., Uniform Commercial Code §§ 9- 504, 9-505, 3B U. L. A. 127, 352 (1992). The Code's cram down option displaces a secured creditor's state-law right to obtain immediate foreclosure upon a debtor's default. That change, ordered by federal law, is attended by a direction that courts look to the "proposed disposition or use" of the collateral in determining its value. It no more disrupts state law to make "disposition or use" the guide for valuation than to authorize the rearrangement of rights the cram down power entails.

Nor are we persuaded that the split-the-difference approach adopted by the Seventh Circuit provides the appropriate solution. See In re Hoskins, 102 F. 3d, at 316. Whatever the attractiveness of a standard that picks the midpoint between foreclosure and replacement values, there is no warrant for it in the Code.5 Section 506(a) calls for the value the property possesses in light of the "disposition or use" in fact "proposed," not the various dispositions or uses that might have been proposed. Cf. BFP v. Resolution Trust Corporation, 511 U. S. 531, 540 (1994) (court-made rule defining, for purposes of Code's fraudulent transfer provi-Senate version of the bill, compare H. R. 8200, 95th Cong., 1st Sess., § 506(a) (1977), with S. 2266, 95th Cong., 1st Sess., § 506(a) (1977), and was included in the final text of the statute after the House-Senate conference, see 124 Cong. Rec. 33997 (1978).

5 As our reading of § 506(a) makes plain, we also reject a ruleless approach allowing use of different valuation standards based on the facts and circumstances of individual cases. Cf. In re Valenti, 105 F. 3d 55, 62-63 (CA2 1997) (permissible for bankruptcy courts to determine valuation standard case-by-case).

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