Prepare for Bankruptcy

If you’re considering filing a chapter 7 or even a chapter 13 bankruptcy, there are certain things that you can do to prepare for bankruptcy in advance to meeting in our office. The documents that we’re going to need to have and we’re going to be asking for will be your tax returns for the past 2 years, pay stubs that you’ve received over the past 2 or 3 weeks. We’re also going to be asking for information with regards your creditors. Now many people lose track over a period of time, and maybe we have to order a credit report in order to make certain that we fully understand what your obligations are. We’re going to need to have the copies of your titles to the car, we’re going to want to see your driver’s license and social security card, and if you have any secured creditors, mortgages, leads on vehicles. We want to see with information regards to those. Account statements showing your current balance, a statement showing what is owed on the vehicle, those could be very, very helpful.

Prepare for Bankruptcy | What is Chapter 13 Bankruptcy?

Many people do not completely understand what a chapter 13 bankruptcy is or the benefits, or the repercussions of filing a chapter 13 bankruptcy. The chapter 13 bankruptcy is designed for those people, particularly those people who fall behind on their mortgage or their car payments; they would love to be able to catch up. Maybe they fell behind because there’s a period of time where they weren’t able to work, maybe because they were laid off, maybe it was a medical reason. Now they’re back at work and they can afford to meet their regular monthly mortgage payments, they could afford to take care of their regular car payments but they can’t afford to pay a lump sum to the creditor in order to bring those accounts to current. A chapter 13 bankruptcy allows you to take the arrears that you owe on your mortgage or your car and pay it over a period of 3 to 5 years and at the same time, allow you to resume making your monthly mortgage payments. It’s very beneficial to someone who’s had a situation where they’ve fallen behind through no fault of the wrong, quite frankly, but would love to catch up at a present time.

Prepare for Bankruptcy | Qualifying for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy

In order to qualify for a chapter 7 bankruptcy, we have to take in to your account your household size and your household income, not just the individual who’s filing the bankruptcy, but all the individuals that are in your home and contributing income towards your expenses, has to be taken into account. Your income has to be below the mid income in New York State for that size of a family unit, if it’s below the mid income, then you automatically qualify to file the chapter 7 bankruptcy. The other issue will be whether or not we can protect your assets under the chapter 7, and that’s something that we sit down and go over discuss and compare to what we would done to be able to protect under the chapter 14 bankruptcy. Typically in New York State, a household size of four would be about Eighty-three thousand dollars, and that’s as of now. That changes on a regular basis, so it goes up and it goes down depending upon what the mid income is in our region in order to file the chapter 7 bankruptcy. But a household of four, eighty-three thousand dollars, if you’re below, you’re going to qualify, usually without any difficulty. If you’re above, then we have to take in to account your other expenses and oddly enough, if you have secured that such as in vehicles, that eats away as your income or if you have an obligation to pay child support, maintenance. That eats away at your income also and may bring you below the min income tax in order to be able to qualify for the chapter 7 bankruptcies. Call Buffalo debt relief lawyer Randy Gugino today for a consultation to learn more.

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