In a chapter 13 you must pay your home mortgage loan in full. The good thing is that the case gives you time to pay this off over the original term of your mortgage. You must pay any overdue payments over the course of the three to five-year plan. You must make your regular monthly payments time. This means that if you were behind on the mortgage payment when you filed for bankruptcy, you will be making a larger mortgage payment during your plan to make up for the past due debt. You will not be allowed to reduce the interest rate on your mortgage loan.

Chapter 7

Soon after filing the petition, you must declare whether you will return the property, purchase the property from the creditor or enter into a Reaffirmation Agreement with the creditor. However, if you do not do one of these things, the stay will terminate and the creditor may take the property.

Chapter 13

Just by filing a bankruptcy petition, an "automatic stay" against all collection efforts goes into effect. Creditors must stop all efforts to collect from you. Creditors must stop making calls to you, stop sending letters, stop all lawsuits to collect, and stop doing everything else to make you pay.

No, not at all. Secured creditors get extraordinary rights in a bankruptcy case. Bankruptcy may temporarily delay secured creditors, but most voluntary liens (such as those held by your mortgage bank and your car lender) have to be satisfied by either paying the creditor or surrendering the property to the creditor.

However, you have some opportunities to remove involuntary liens and a small category of voluntary liens.

Chapter 7

A "secured creditor" is a creditor that has a lien on an item of your property. A lien is an interest in property that allows a creditor to have your property sold to satisfy your debt to that creditor. Mortgage lenders and car lenders are secured creditors. They have voluntary liens on your property.

Chapter 7

Every state has exemption laws that allow you to keep some necessities, even if you do not pay your creditors. The idea is that it would do little good to take all of your assets because you would not have a place to live, clothes to wear or a way to get to work. Most exemption laws allow you to keep clothes, household goods, a car of some limited value, tools of trade, as well as other property. Some exemptions allow you to keep some equity in a house.

Most efforts by a creditor to collect a pre-petition debt (one that you owe as of the filing of your case) or to repossess your property without the permission of the bankruptcy court are violations of the automatic stay. If a creditor repossesses any property, such as your car, after you file for bankruptcy, the creditor must return the property to you.

You should notify your attorney and provide him or her with all the information necessary to complete the schedule (the amount of the debt, the type and value of any collateral, and the name and address of the creditor). This is very important, because if you do not list a debt on your schedules, that debt might not be discharged. That means you will be required to pay the debt in full after bankruptcy.

If an omitted creditor demands payment of the debt, you should inform the creditor of the bankruptcy, as discussed below.

Yes. You must list all your debts, with the name and address of the creditors. This is so creditors receive notice of the bankruptcy and get their fair share of any money paid to creditors. You may think that you should omit a creditor because you want to continue to pay the debt. This would violate the law, and it is unnecessary because you can always choose to pay a debt voluntarily, even though the debt has been discharged and there is no legal obligation to make payment. However, creditors are prohibited from taking any action to collect discharged debts.

Yes. You must provide the trustee and/or any creditor with copies of any federal tax return that you filed for the year prior to filing. If you do not comply with this request, the court may dismiss your bankruptcy case.

You must also file copies of any federal tax returns filed during the case with the bankruptcy court.

Any taxing authority may request dismissal of a bankruptcy case if you fail to file all required tax returns.