Some friends! All of them, no doubt, with law degrees and expertise in Bankruptcy Law. And all of them with excellent hearing: “I heard that if you file for bankruptcy, you lose your house.” Or, “I heard when you file for bankruptcy, you lose your car.” Or, “I heard when you file for bankruptcy, they come into your house and take your things.” Or, or, or . . . If I had two dollars for every time I heard this . . . (I used to want a dollar, but with inflation over the years. . . ) So what is true, and what is not? I can write for pages about what you can keep and what you can’t keep, but here is a quick summary of what we can do for you.
We will never place you in the position where you will lose your house. Almost everyone who comes to us have houses that are within the equity guidelines that are allowed by the law. And if your house has more equity than the law appears to allow, you can consider an alternate type of bankruptcy, Chapter 13, which also allows you to keep your house. Plus our court has a mortgage modification program which can provide additional relief from high mortgage payments or interest rates and can sometimes place your back payments at the end of the loan. If you are by some chance one of those rare people, and I mean rare, that we cannot help, we will tell you that in advance. We would never allow your assets to be placed at risk.
Most of our clients have cars that are either financed or old, sometimes both. It is extremely rare that these cars would be in any kind of jeopardy, and we would know this long before you agreed to file any papers, so relax. And if you have that 1969 Camaro that is in pristine condition (you know, 396 SS/RS in white with orange stripes and a houndstooth interior), we will talk to you about options there, also. After a test drive, of course.
No one comes into your house! I still have no idea where this came from. So unless you are committing fraud by hiding valuable items and not telling us (and you better NOT do this!), normal household items are not at all at risk.
So who are you going to believe, your “friends”, or us? We have been doing this for well over three decades. It’s time for you to deal with your financial issues by giving us a call.
Now about that Camaro…….