BKtango and anyone else that can help

[freshstart06]

Sorry to ask all these question but I am just worried.

Does it look bad to be so negative??? if so is it wise to downplay my expenses??? But everything can be verified, we don't own any thing expense nor do we have high credit card debt just all the medical and kid expense. I was thinking of including the Indian profit sharing as income but the "free" Lawyer said it was exempt and not necessary but we file taxes on it. But it does not matter we are still negative.

[BKTango]

I'll answer what questions I can but first let me put on my counselors cap for a minute.

Don't be sorry to ask questions. If by some chance one of us can help you out in a way someone before us had helped us then that's great. So never be afraid to ask questions....just try to keep them in 1 thread so I don't get confused.

When I first came to this board I was in shear panic, I just knew I was going to lose everything, even though a church mouse wouldn't want what we have. I was scared and stressed. We have all been there. You have ongoing medical problems and you have kids. I was the same. The one thing I learned over time ... you have got to calm down. Bankruptcy is a scary thing, but it's also just a business decision for you family. So for the sake of your health and the kids (because they see more than we think) just take a deep breath and breathe. It will al work out in the end and you will be just fine. Later on, you will realize as I did, that it really isn't as scary as you let yourself think.

Counseling over.

The negative thing, while you want to show a negative or be just at that window ... having a such a large negative might raise a few eyebrows. Of course that depends on the actual size of your negative. I mean you don't want to be living in a overly expensive home and show a huge negative. That could make it look like the reason you can't pay your bills is the home. Most people in a chapter 7 usually are either just breaking even between their income and expenses forms, they maybe be on the surplus side of under $100 (anything over $160 usually will place you in a chapter 13), or they are negative to maybe just $200 or so give or take.

I honestly am still not sure whether the tribal profit sharing is exempt, some indian earnings are but only certain ones. So I can't really answer as to whether you would even need to include that or not.