I know I got a discharge, and I tried to apply for some financing, and they said I was good to go, but my bankruptcy is still open. How could that be? I got a discharge!

Maybe a creditor has filed some sort of motion, they want to do something. Maybe the trustee has found assets that the trustee wants to administer and that could take weeks, months, or even years before your case is closed after you got a discharge.

So, sometimes if you want to try to get on with your life after you get your discharge, but the case is still open, you should bring your bankruptcy attorney into the picture, try to get their help, so that you can coordinate with lenders or landlords or anybody else who needs to fully understand what’s going on in your situation, so that you can move forward in your life after getting a discharge, even though the bankruptcy case has not been closed.

Thoughts from a Maryland Bankruptcy Lawyer

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I got a scholarship for a college but then I had to drop out and now the college says that I have to repay that scholarship. Can I just charge that debt in Chapter 7 bankruptcy?

The bad news is you can’t discharge that in Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 because that is considered an obligation to repay a scholarship or a stipend or an educational benefit and the bankruptcy specifically says those are the kind of debts that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. They are considered on par with other student loans so that is a thing that you’ll have to plan to repay even if you decide for other reasons to file bankruptcy.

Thoughts from a Maryland Bankruptcy Lawyer

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I woke up this morning, and I went out to start my car, and it had been repo’d. Now I’m going to have to file bankruptcy to get it back. How long is that going to take?

A good bankruptcy law firm has been through this fire drill many times before, and it depends in large part on the lender and their process for dealing with these bankruptcy cases. Experienced lenders, the ones who know what they are doing, they can turnaround and return your car a day after you file bankruptcy, providing your attorney does all the right things.

Some lenders they’re not with the program. They are not as experienced and with them it can take a week to get your car back. So really the better play is to file the bankruptcy before the car gets repo’d.

Thoughts from a Maryland Bankruptcy Lawyer

The post My Car Has Been Repossessed! How Long Will It Take To Get It Back After Filing Bankruptcy? appeared first on Baltimore Bankruptcy Lawyer.

Today I want to answer the question, I have these payday loans and they’re killing me. Can I discharge those in bankruptcy? Well, the short answer to that question is yes. Payday loans are fully dischargeable in bankruptcy. Even if they are being automatically deducted from your paycheck or deducted from your bank accounts or being deducted based upon a debit card, you can file bankruptcy, list them on the bankruptcy papers that you file with the court. They’ll have 60 days from the date you meet with the trustee to object to your bankruptcy case on the basis of fraud, which almost never happens, and then, on the 61st day after you meet with the trustee, the court will issue a discharge order, and you will be free from those payday loans.

Of course, the instant you file the bankruptcy case, the automatic stay of bankruptcy will prevent that payday loan creditor from taking any action to collect on that debt, but the bankruptcy process will protect you from the payday loans and will give you relief from those very expensive and onerous financial obligations.

The post Can Payday Loans Be Discharged In Bankruptcy? appeared first on Baltimore Bankruptcy Lawyer.

Today I want to answer the question: I’m about to be evicted from my home. Can I file bankruptcy and stop the eviction?

Well the answer to that question depends on where you are in the eviction process. If there is a judgment for possession that’s been given to your landlord, you have very, very narrow options. What you need to do, is you need to pay one month’s rent into the bankruptcy court when you file your bankruptcy case. The bankruptcy system is basically giving you 30 days to figure out how you’re going to cure the arrears. But to buy those 30 days, you’ve got to pay 1 month’s rent into court when you file your bankruptcy case. And, that’s the only way to stop the eviction if there’s already been a judgment for possession.

Now, if there’s not a judgment for possession, you have more options. Because then you can file your bankruptcy case, usually a Chapter 13 although it could be a Chapter 7, and that stops the process from moving forward so the landlord can’t get a judgment for possession against you and that will give you more time than if they already have the judgment.

For example, you don’t have to file the bankruptcy case with the 30 days rent prepaid. So, if you don’t think you’re going to be able to get your rent payment together before the judgment of possession, you would do well to run to a bankruptcy lawyer and get your bankruptcy case filed as soon as possible that you have more options in the bankruptcy.

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Today I want to answer the question is bankruptcy too good to be true? Client’s have asked me this question after I walked them through the process and they see how the bankruptcy process can win of them their crippling and put them on a good sound footing towards financial security. And, it just seems like it’s too good to be true.

Well, the answer to that is, it kind of depends upon your situation. If you have significant equity in your assets, you may have to deal with that and it may be a more expensive process and you could expose those assets to creditors through bankruptcy. In that case, it’s not too good to be true. Another situation may be if you have debts that are not dischargeable because they’re student loans or they’re recent taxes. In that case, it’s not too good to be true because you’re going to have to deal with those debts even after you get through with your bankruptcy case.

But, if you have income that is below the median income for your state, if you have significant credit card debt or medical debt or other debt like that, that can be discharged in bankruptcy, then the bankruptcy process may end up being fairly straight forward and give you a tremendous amount of relief from debts that otherwise would take you years or even decades to resolve if you were making minimum payments on credit cards.

And for those people where certainly your credit may take a hit, but most people do have their credit recover after a couple of years, for those people, it may seem that bankruptcy is too good to be true.

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Today I want to answer the question, you know, I had a really good consult with a bankruptcy lawyer and he didn’t charge me, and now I think I know enough to file my own bankruptcy case. Is that a good idea?

Well, you know, I’m a bankruptcy lawyer, so I’m again doing that. Why? I’ve found that a very high percentage of people who do their own bankruptcy cases have them dismissed because:

They don’t do their credit counseling properly.

They don’t fill out their paperwork properly.

They don’t fill out their paperwork on time. They miss the meeting of creditors.

They don’t answer all the questions completely, truthfully and accurately.

They don’t list all their assets.

They don’t list all of their income.

They don’t list all their expenses. Their expenses are not accurately presented.

The assets that they list have crazy all over the place value.

They don’t list the exemptions so they aren’t authorized to keep any of the stuff that they wanted to keep.

They don’t realize that they have assets that are at risk if they file.

They don’t realize that there are timing issues and that if they were being garnished they can get back some of that money.

They just don’t know about the process.

Chapter 13 is even worse than Chapter 7.

They don’t know how to fill out the plan papers.

They miss their plan payments because they don’t have somebody reminding them to do it.

They don’t adequately cure all the arrears on their home mortgage.

They miss the fact that they might be able to restructure their car loan in Chapter 13, if they’ve had it a sufficient period of time, or they expose their home to foreclosure because they filed the wrong chapter.

Bankruptcy is not a commodity. It’s a fairly complex procedure that really takes into consideration all of your financial circumstances. So my advice to that person is if you find a lawyer that you trust and that you feel is giving you good advice, you should work with that lawyer. See if the lawyer has payment plans that can make the process more affordable for you, and by all means go forward with that attorney.

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Today, I want to answer the question if I’m incarcerated or a loved one is incarcerated and they really need to file bankruptcy, can you file bankruptcy if you’re in prison or in jail? The short answer to that question is certainly.

Being incarcerated does not disqualify you from filing a bankruptcy case. Frequently what has to happen though is you need somebody on the outside to have a power of attorney for you so that they can move the documents around, sometimes sign on your behalf or appear for you in meetings of creditors, but sometimes, that’s not even necessary.

You can fill out the forms while you are incarcerated. You can sometimes do a written response to the questions that the trustee will ask at your meeting with the trustee, and you can do your credit counseling course and your financial management course in writing in order to get all the benefits of the bankruptcy law.

So while it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do, you can file bankruptcy while you’re incarcerated.

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Today I want to focus on what happens if you’ve had wages garnished before the bankruptcy case. The really good news is if your wages have been garnished within the 90 days before you file bankruptcy, you can get that money back. That could help you pay your household bills or even pay your bankruptcy lawyer and other expenses in connection with your case.

Now the reason why this is a timing consideration is that 90 day period is very strictly observed. So we’re going to look at exactly how much is taken out of your paycheck during the 90 days before the bankruptcy. So we’d like to get your case filed at a time when the most money has been taken out before that 90-day period or really we’d like to file your case as soon as possible so that there’s nothing taken out before the bankruptcy.

But if you can’t arrange that, you want to get your case filed so that you can get as much money as possible back before you file the bankruptcy case in the bankruptcy case.

The post Get Back Money That’s Been Garnished From Your Paycheck! appeared first on Baltimore Bankruptcy Lawyer.

An important timing plan involves taxes. A lot of people think taxes in bankruptcy are just non dischargeable but that’s just not true. If all the three major timing elements are present in your bankruptcy case for the taxes in question, they can be discharged in the bankruptcy.

The three major timing elements and I’ve talked about this in other videos, all right, it’s for a tax year that’s at least 3 years before the year that you file bankruptcy, you filed the returns for that year at least 2 years before the bankruptcy and the taxes were assessed at least 240 days before the bankruptcy. Most of the time, we’re looking at that 3 year rule.

Let’s say you have a $10,000.00 tax bill for a tax year that’s about 2 years ago. Well, it might pay for you to work out an installment plan with the IRS and put off filing your bankruptcy for 9 months or even a year before the taxes for that year become dischargeable. That way, it’s going to save you $10,000.00. The taxes that would survive bankruptcy will all of a sudden past a certain specific date become dischargeable and won’t survive bankruptcy. It’s an important planning consideration.

When clients come to see me and they’ve got a tax debt, that’s one of the questions we always ask, what’s the tax year for which you are concerned and did you ask for an extension for your taxes. Those are both important questions that need to be answered before I can tell you if the taxes are going to be dischargeable in your bankruptcy, so once again, it does pay to have all your facts in hand before you make the decision whether to file bankruptcy.

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