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Really? I Can Do That With A Bankruptcy?

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Really? I Can Do That With A Bankruptcy?

Most people are aware that they can use a bankruptcy to prevent a foreclosure or to keep a car from being repossessed. They are also aware that bankruptcy is great for getting rid of debt that cannot be paid such as deficiencies from repossessed cars and houses, huge medical and credit card debt and other such situations that people would consider “in the norm.”

It may really shock people to find out that a person can get their suspended driver’s license back when they file bankruptcy in some situations. This is the common scenario that can happen: A person has been having real problems financially. They decide that in order to put food on the table, they need to skip a car insurance payment. The car insurance is cancelled. Well, of course there has to be an accident once the insurance is cancelled. That is the theory of Murphy’s Law— “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong” Worse, the accident is that person’s fault. So, they have a bill for about $22,000 they have to pay. They are responsible for the damages to the other automobile and the medical debt, if any. The insurance company for the other party will do two things. They will sue the person who caused the accident and then report to the State of Texas that there is no insurance. The State of Texas will suspend the Driver’s License for failure to be financially responsible for their actions. Yes, the person should have had the insurance, but sometimes life happens and bad things really do happen to very good people.

That person can certainly file bankruptcy to eliminate the $22,000 in debt. What many people do not realize is that filing bankruptcy will also lift the suspension of the driver’s license (if no alcohol is involved) as well! The reason is fairly simple. The license was lost because the person failed to be responsible for the debt and the suspension is in place until the debt is satisfied. As bankruptcy will eliminate the debt, the debt is then satisfied and there is no legal reason for a suspension to remain in place.

Bankruptcy can do other things as well. In a recent case filed, the owner of a club was behind on his fees and taxes to the State of Texas. The Texas Alcohol and Beverage Commission (TABC) came into to yank the license from the bar owner. He filed a Chapter 13 bankruptcy to reorganize the debt and to pay it. The TABC cannot then take the license and in effect take away the ability of the person to make a living.

Clients are often faced with huge garnishments on their wages from the IRS, Attorney General or for unpaid student loans. While those types of debts are usually not dischargeable, the garnishment itself can be stopped. Sometimes, a plan can be put into place that allows those debts to be fully paid. Sometimes it is just a matter of getting rid of the credit card debt and other obligations to free up money to be able to pay those huge debts that simply will not go away.

If you are facing an unusual financial situation that you think might be benefited by filing a bankruptcy, give us a call at (800) 215-9089 or email us. We offer a FREE, no-obligation consultation. We can explain the bankruptcy and non-bankruptcy options as well. Give us a call and let us try to help.

Three Reasons to File for Bankruptcy

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Bailey & Galyen
Your Neighborhood Law Firm

The reasons people decide, after months and years of struggle, to file for bankruptcy are individual and unique. But for most people, it’s situational – an unexpected job loss, medical problem, or divorce has created financial chaos and an inability to pay debts. While the facts in your case are somewhat unique to you, the truth is that everyone who files a bankruptcy does so for one (or more) of the following three reasons:

Reason Number One: Only Bankruptcy Gets All of Your Creditors off Your Back Right Now

Until you downloaded this information, Creditors have outmaneuvered you, putting you right where they wanted. Creditors use bill collectors and attorneys (often paid on commission) to use all means at their disposal – legal or otherwise – to get their pound of flesh from you. This takes many forms:

• Threatening Phone Calls – to your home, work, neighbors, and relatives
• Threatening Letters
• In-person collection visits to your home
• Offers of “settlement” where they get into your bank account
• Repossession of cars and other personal property
• Lawsuits, judgments, and collections on judgments with garnishments and levies
• Foreclosure of your home and other real estate

Their only goal is to get your money. They are utterly uninterested in your personal situation (no matter how dire) and will do whatever it takes to get you to pay. They know something you don’t – that your money is a limited resource, and that they are in competition with other creditors for that resource. They think, if we don’t get their money now, someone else will. Creditors therefore have no qualms about upsetting you personally or ruining your life to collect the money owed them. And creditors don’t care if you don’t have the resources to hire an attorney to defend against their tactics. They don’t care about your sleepless nights and feelings of guilt or embarrassment.

But here’s the good news: a bankruptcy filing automatically stays (stops) all creditor collection activity – even lawsuits, repossessions, and foreclosures – immediately.

The automatic stay is powerful and only available in federal bankruptcy court. It goes into effective immediately, nationwide, and lasts for the duration of the case unless otherwise ordered by the court – a financial force field around you, your family, and your assets.

Reason Number Two: Bankruptcy Can Give You a Fresh Start

One of the biggest reasons non-bankruptcy options fail (such as debt settlement, credit counseling, and debt consolidation) is simply the lack of a “finish line.” For many people in debt, there is simply no end in sight. Whether your income is reduced or your expenses are stretching you to the breaking point, ask yourself: are you trapped in debt you can never repay? When is this nightmare going to end?

Debt is a burden. Its effects on your mental (and physical!) health as well as your personal relationships (with spouse, family, and friends) are well-established. Wanting relief from this burden is a natural, normal, and a positive reaction to a bad situation. This is why we have had bankruptcy laws in the United States since the founding of our nation – because we believe, as a country, that people are entitled to a second chance. Bankruptcy can help good people resolve bad situations.

If you are reading this, you have probably tried all other options to resolve your debts. Let’s go over traditional non-bankruptcy options and explain their shortcomings.

• Debt Settlement – requires a lump sum of money to settle for a portion of the total debt. To obtain this lump sum, you may have to save up – while the interest grows and lawsuits and other collection efforts ramp up against you. Debt settlement companies routinely charge $5,000.00 or more to negotiate your debts and require their fee up front. For most of our clients, the truth is harsh – if you had the money to pay your debts, you wouldn’t be reading this. And creditors won’t wait around for you to save up enough money to pay them a fraction of their debt.
• Debt Consolidation – this essentially refinances your debt into one payment with (ideally) a lower interest rate. This option assumes that (a) you have the credit and collateral (bank deposits, land, etc.) to get the loan and (b) you can afford a payment at the lower rate. If you had good credit and the ability to borrow your way out of your debt problem, you wouldn’t be reading this. For many of our clients, the problem isn’t just the interest rate, it’s the sheer size of their debts compared to their ability to pay.
• Credit Counseling – while credit counseling is effective for borrowers with a small amount of credit card debt, it simply does not work if you have a significant ($10,000.00 or more, typically) in credit card debt or if you have other debts. Credit counseling cannot resolve your medical bills, non-credit card balances (broken cell phone contracts, apartment leases, old repossessions, etc.), and of course debts owed for taxes, student loans, and child support. Simply put, in most situations credit counseling only works for folks with a small amount of credit card debt.

Bankruptcy will, in the vast majority of cases, give you a fresh start through the discharge – a court order that forever eliminates most debts. Wouldn’t it be nice to be permanently rid of your creditors so that you can rebuild your life and take care of your family?

Bankruptcy can permanently eliminate credit cards, medical bills, personal loans, debts from broken leases and contracts, repossession and foreclosure deficiencies, and many other kinds of debt. While some debts (notably IRS obligations, student loans, and child support) are generally not dischargeable, there are available bankruptcy options to deal with these debts as well – most notably, to set up a payment arrangement without any future interest or penalties.

Reason Number Three: Bankruptcy Can Help You Keep your Assets

Sometimes, creditors want more than your money – they want your house, your car, and your bank account. Depending on the type of debt involved, outside of bankruptcy this is unfortunately a fact of life. What can creditors do to your property?

• Foreclosure – In Texas, if you are in default, home lenders have the power to take your home from you after a fairly short period of time – without a court order. Certain other creditors (such as taxing authorities), after filing a lawsuit, may be able to foreclose your home as well.
• Repossession – Your car creditor can generally repossess your vehicle at any time you are in default – without a court order. Once repossessed, they can then sell it as soon as seven days later.
• Garnishment & Levy – While garnishment of wages in Texas is generally prohibited (other than for child support and taxes), after getting a judgment creditors can garnish bank accounts and other financial assets and seize personal property assets to be auctioned off to pay the debt.
• Abstract of Judgment – even if creditors can’t reach your assets presently, after a court order a judgment can be abstracted in the county records, impairing the legal title to your home and other real property. This means, as a practical matter, that it will be difficult to buy, sell, or refinance a home or other real property until the judgment is resolved.

Bankruptcy not only stops these collection activities– it protects your most important property, too. If you are eligible, Texas law allows you to protect your homestead, a vehicle for each driving-age member of your household, clothing, furniture, jewelry, household goods, retirement accounts, life insurance policies, and even family pets. And while these assets are also generally exempt outside of bankruptcy, only bankruptcy stops the collection activities against your property and allows you to discharge the underlying debts forever so that you will not face a garnishment of your bank accounts or have to deal with a judgment lien years down the road.

In bankruptcy, as long as you continue to make your regular installment payments on your home and car, those assets cannot be foreclosed or repossessed. And even if you are behind on these payments, a payment plan can be established in bankruptcy to catch you up and keep your property.

The next step – give us a call for a free consultation with a licensed attorney. Relief is literally one phone call away!

Get Creditors Off Your Back

Get a Fresh Start

Keep your Assets

Abuse of the Homeowner

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In this article I explore how the mortgage industry abuses the homeowners before and then after a bankruptcy case is filed. Our homes are supposed to be our castles, yet if we are not careful, the mortgage companies can quickly dethrone us.

During these rough economic times, many of us can find ourselves facing financial difficulties at some point. It could be that there were unexpected medical bills, a business downturn or a loss of income. Sometimes, the mortgage “momentarily” takes a backseat to the emergencies in our life.

What we have seen practiced by some mortgage servicers is that, when a homeowner gets behind in payments, the servicer begins two processes aimed at protecting its interest in the property. On one hand, it may offer the owner an opportunity to refinance/restructure the note, and on the other hand, it may initiate foreclosure proceedings.

The difficulty for the homeowner is to understand that the loan servicer could be executing both processes in parallel. This confusion is due to misrepresentations or misunderstandings occurring during the frantic phone calls between the homeowner and the different service personnel in the servicer’s customer service department. The difficulty is made worse when the homeowner does not seek legal advice early in the process for a myriad of reasons, often involving pride in being able to handle one’s own problems.

Fortunate few, however, at some point before the foreclosure make themselves get legal advice that can save their homes. For others who try to work it out on their own, they sometimes learn after the fact that their homes were foreclosed on during the time that they were sending in the piles and piles of the paperwork required for refinancing, paperwork that the mortgage company conveniently loses.

Consulting with a bankruptcy attorney early in the process when a homeowner gets into financial distress can be beneficial more often than not. Bankruptcy attorneys can quickly develop insights into your situation and can plan actions to take so that an orderly bankruptcy process is undertaken. Most people do not like the stigma of filing for bankruptcy; however, those who truly consider all options will be more likely to come up with a better plan for getting a fresh start in life while keeping their home.

Review your cash flow situation months ahead if possible. However, if you foresee a negative cash flow situation, consider talking to a bankruptcy attorney prior to using up your savings and other resources that you and your family may need to meet your basic needs. The consultation is free and there may be other options. Until you sit down with an experienced attorney, you will not know if bankruptcy can help. Come see us.

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Student Loans Are Burying Me. What Can I Do?

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Many Americans have borrowed tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans, only to find that the education they received has not helped them achieve an income level that allows them to pay their student loans. Many others pay their student loans but are unable to purchase homes, or new cars, or even dinners out, because their student loans are such a burden on their budget.

The numbers clearly show this burden is large and growing. In 2004, 66% of graduates of 4 year universities had student loan debts. The average debt was $19,200, which was a 108% increase from ten years earlier. For those with graduate degrees, the numbers are much higher, ranging from $32,858 for those receiving Master’s degrees, to over $125,000 for medical school graduates. For many people, student loans are a crippling financial burden.

Can bankruptcy help? The short answer is yes and no.

First the bad news, bankruptcy will almost certainly not discharge, or eliminate, student loans. In 1998, Congress changed the bankruptcy laws to make most student loans non-dischargeable, and in 2005 all other student loan were made non-dischargeable. There is an exception to the rule, but almost no one qualifies for the exception. In short, bankruptcy almost never wipes away student loans.

Where bankruptcy can help is to give an individual a break from student loan repayment and harassment from student loan collectors. If a borrower is in default on student loans, and receiving phone calls, threatening letters, being sued, or having their wages garnished for student loans, the automatic stay in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy can stop all of these collection tactics for the duration of the case. This allows the borrower time to “catch their breath” and reorganize their debts, without the burden of student loan collection efforts or wage garnishment.

While not eliminating student loans, a bankruptcy discharge may allow an individual to eliminate other debts, such as credit cards, medical bills, foreclosure or repossession deficiencies or personal loans, so that the individual can dedicate the money from these payments to pay their student loans.

There may be non-bankruptcy alternatives to eliminating student loans as well. Many Federal student loans can be cancelled by the U.S. Department of Education if the borrower dies or becomes totally and permanently disabled. In addition, under some circumstances a student loan may be cancelled if the school the borrower attended closed while the borrower was enrolled or soon thereafter, or if the school improperly certified the student’s ability to benefit from the training provided by the school.

Finally, state and Federal governments have several programs to forgive student loans of individuals in certain fields and professions, such as teaching, social work, medicine, and military service.