How do you decide to file a bankruptcy relief or not file a bankruptcy relief? Well, how about giving me some idea of your financial situation with a completed worksheet? Or, I guess you can decide on your own, since I have no knowledge of your financial situation.
We can send out a bankruptcy data worksheet and a list of documentary needs without obligation. Actually, if you thoroughly completed the worksheet, you would gain the most useful analysis and advice. You might even learn facets of your financial situation that you didn’t previously know, or that you suppressed, or facets of which you did not appreciate the significance.
Let’s Look at Your Choices
There are ONLY 5 options available to people suffering in a financial crisis.
- Do nothing. That means keep doing what you have been doing. Eventually, law suits will culminate in judgments, and that may prompt wage garnishments, months away.
- Pay all obligations in full. That means you have the joint and collective financial wherewithal to satisfy and placate all creditors.
- Pay all obligations in part. That means the “parts” that the creditors want and will take as partial satisfaction on all their obligations (compromised amounts) to, again, leave you alone. Some may not compromise at all; others might, but probably only after you submit financial documents proving a lack of money.
- Pay affordable surplus money left over AFTER reasonable living expenses, for a set period, in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy. This is math, not guilt. That means your affordable “part”, not theirs, over a period of 36 months or 60 months, depending upon Chapter 13 Plan of personal reorganization eligibility. Whatever accumulated grand total of that monthly “surplus” is paid against the total indebtedness, is all the creditors get, and any unpaid balance remaining is discharged at the end of the bankruptcy period.
- Discharge all unsecured obligations in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. This means you keep all eligible retirement accounts and some other “exempt” assets, and go forth with a “fresh start.” This is also math, not guilt.
I have spent my whole career looking for a sixth option, and I have never found one. Many years ago, a client offered “win the lottery” as a sixth option, so go do that if you can.
You can work all you wish on the first three. I don’t need to be involved. I can help with budgeting, but I don’t need to do so, and that could be expensive help. I can work on the potential of number 4 and/or 5. No one files bankruptcy because they want to. But, in a surprising paradox, credit is often more easily obtainable within a few months after filing. Yet, why even think about credit!?! You would be better off just focusing on keeping a good job and really, really, living within your paycheck. I have issues with the credit industry, maybe because we all got along just fine without any “FICO scores” as recent as the 1980’s.
Neither you nor I are filing a bankruptcy case until every predictable ramification is identified and discussed. If there is some presently unknown dilemma that precludes filing, we won’t do it. Or, maybe we’ll decide to do it later.
You got money? You definitely have a money problem and the only real solution is money. When you don’t have money, well, see option numbers 4 and 5. Do you know many people have gone bankrupt since 2007? Millions!
Help Us Help You
Do I really need the worksheet completed? Well, I work for you; you don’t work for me. But how am I supposed to advise you? And, if that hurdle somehow stops your own decision-making, aren’t you back to Option number 1?
[NOTICE REGARDING BANKRUPTCY CASES ONLY: This firm provides bankruptcy counsel and representation and is a federally-designated “Debt Relief Agency” under the United States Bankruptcy Laws.]
