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You’ve filed your chapter 13 bankruptcy paperwork and submitted your schedules and payment plan. The meeting of creditors is completed and you’ve answered the trustee’s questions. The next step in the process is your confirmation hearing. In some courts, the confirmation hearing will happen on the same day as the meeting of creditors. In […]The post The Chapter 13 Bankruptcy Confirmation Hearing appeared first on Tucson Bankruptcy Attorneys Trezza & Associates.
When an individual files for bankruptcy protection they are required by law to disclose all of their assets and all of their liabilities. What exactly does that mean?
Assets are possessions. They are the things that we own or have some sort of interest in. Our homes and cars are assets even if we owe the bank money for a lien they hold on these assets. Our bank accounts, cash in our wallets and even the wallets themselves are all assets. It is important when an individual files for bankruptcy that they list all of the things they own regardless of how much these assets are worth. Broken down vehicles, costume jewelry and pets may not be worth a great deal of money, and certainly are not things a trustee would be interested in liquidating, but failure to list these items could put your bankruptcy discharge in jeopardy.
Additionally, individuals are required to list everyone they own money to. This includes back child support, student loans, credit cards, mortgages and other traditional debts. It also includes loans owed to your parents, fiance, siblings, business and other non-traditional debts. Many times debtors are reluctant to list there non-traditional debts out of fear that they will not be allowed to repay the money they owe to these individuals. In fact, voluntary payment on discharged debts are perfectly legal and while failing to list them will harm your chances at discharge, repaying them after discharge will in no way violate the law.
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While many consumers struggle to make payments on their medical bills, there are doctors facing a similar struggle; except it involves keeping their businesses afloat. The American Bankruptcy Institute’s health care committee has noticed a spike in Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings by doctors with 8 being filed in recent weeks alone. Industry experts have noticed [...]
Due to severe budgetary constraints, the United States Trustee is no longer designating bankruptcy cases for random audits. Bankruptcy attorneys across both Oregon and Washington who had to cope with the burdensome audit requirements aslong with their clients are now breathing a heavy sigh of relief
Ever since the enactment of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA), Debtor’s counsel across both Oregon and Washington had to cope with the prospect that any one case filed in either state might be subject to a random audit. This is so because the BACPA established procedures for independent audit firms to review not only the Schedules filed in a given case but the supporting documents relied on to support the Chapter 7 Bankruptcy filing.
The documentation required by the audit firms were extremely burdensome to both bankruptcy filers and their attorneys. While the audits were random to both the attorney and government, it was often difficult to convince a bankruptcy filer that the audit wasn’t personal or that their attorney hadn’t somehow messes things up. Even worse, the audits themselves were wholly conducted by third party accounting firms that had very little knowledge of the ins and outs of consumer bankruptcy. The paper requirements that they would impose on chapter 7 bankruptcy filers might have been more properly used on corporations. Here’s hoping that the random audits never come back.
If you have any questions about audits or what kind of review is likely to take place after you file Chapter 7 Bankruptcy, please feel free to contact me any time or set an appointment at any one of our bankruptcy law offices in Portland, Salem, Vancouver or Seattle. I will look forward to hearing from you and getting your Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Case filed.
The original post is titled United States Trustee Ends Random Audits For Oregon and Washington Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Cases , and it came from Oregon Bankruptcy Lawyer | Portland, Salem, and Vancouver, Wa .
One of the most important elements debtors should review when considering bankruptcy is how personal debt is handled by the court. When you file, you are required to list outstanding debt including loans owed to friends or family. Depending on the chapter you file they are handled differently. For the most part, these types of [...]
Here at Shenwick & Associates, we often get questions from clients if they may transfer a house or an apartment from one spouse to the other after being sued or prior to a bankruptcy filing. In In re Panepinto, Case No. 12-11230K (Bankr. W.D.N.Y., Feb. 25, 2013), an upstate Bankruptcy Court considered this question and held that such a transfer could be a fraudulent conveyance and set aside.
In this case, in 2008 a judgment creditor was seeking to collect on a debt owed by Mrs. Panepinto, an insolvent who owned a house with no mortgages or other liens encumbering the property. So, to thwart her judgment creditor, she transferred the house to her husband with no consideration for the transfer.
Last year, Mrs. Panepinto filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy, and her judgment creditor sought to set aside the transfer as a fraudulent conveyance under New York Debtor and Creditor Law §273. The Bankruptcy Court sustained the judgment creditor's challenge to the transfer.
The lesson is that before transferring ownership in property, a debtor should seek advice from an experienced bankruptcy attorney, such as Jim Shenwick.
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Payday loans, also known as a cash advance, are short-term loans borrowers obtain against their next paycheck. While they seem convenient in helping you get necessary expenses covered between pay days, many find themselves trapped in trying to break the cycle of getting it paid without the need to take it out again. Due to [...]
They’d been divorced for years when she discovered he’d been messing with her credit score.
She called in tears, sobbing about how her ex-husband was supposed to have removed her name from the joint credit card as part of the divorce decree. He hadn’t done so, fell behind on the payments to the creditor, and now her credit score looked like swiss cheese.
Help me, she implored. But there was only so muh I could do for her.
Here’s what she needed to know before the divorce was finalized.
The Divorce Agreement Doesn’t Count
If a credit card company gives you and your spouse a joint account, all three of you are parties to that contract. In order to change the terms of the contract, all three of you must agree.
A divorce agreement doesn’t involve the creditor, so any decision with respect to the account isn’t binding on the credit card company. You and your former spouse can agree to anything you want, but unless the creditor agrees as well it’s not going to amount to much.
Joint Account, Joint Liability
There’s no finger-pointing allowed in matters of joint credit cards. You’re both on the hook.
If the account is in both of your name, you and your former spouse are both liable regardless of who made the charges. Contractually, the lender can come after both of you if the account isn’t paid on a timely basis.
In comparison, authorized users on an account are not liable for repayment.
If you don’t know which you are, call the creditor and find out.
Getting Your Name Off A Joint Credit Card
If you want to get your name off a joint credit card, you’re going to need to pick up the phone and call the creditor. Each credit card company, car lender and, yes, mortgage company has a set of internal guidelines concerning this process.
You and the other card holder will likely have to fill out a few forms, so make sure you get that some as soon as you can. Make copies of the completed forms, send them back certified mail, and keep the return receipts as proof of mailing.
If you don’t hear back in 30-60 days, call the creditor again to see if there’s been a decision on your application. If your name is removed, get a copy of the decision letter from the credit card company and keep it handy.
It’s Simple But Not So Easy
If you look at the steps above you’ll see how simple it is. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to remove your name from a joint account.
Right now, the credit card company has two people they can hassle and, ultimately, sue if the bill isn’t paid. By removing your name, their odds of repayment decrease by half.
In order for the company to feel comfortable removing your name, the other person has got to be credit-worthy on their own. Even moreso that if that other person just applied for a new account, in fact. After all, this isn’t a card with a $0 balance so the risk to the credito is greater than would otherwise be the case.
If All Else Fails, Close The Account
An account holder can close a credit card account to prevent further charges. If you can’t get your name off the account, you should consider doing this as a way to minimize the damage to your credit in the event that your former spouse keeps using the joint account.
This won’t stop the interest or other fees, but it will stop things from getting worse.
Image courtesy of 401(K) 2013
Debt And Divorce: Getting Your Name Off A Joint Account was originally published on Consumer Help Central. If you're seeing this message on another site, it has been stolen and is being used without permission. That's illegal, a violation of copyright, and just plain awful.
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