Please help, when best to file?

[sodone]

Ok, here goes...
First of all I want to thank everyone for sharing their experiences here. I have been a lurker, and it has helped me with my research, but I want to ask is it better to wait it out until you can show a true picture of your income as it is now (I am not working now, stopped in March due to new baby, can't afford daycare)?
My DH is over the means on his own income, with both of ours its way over. However we are letting the house go and one car just got reposessed. We have an atty, however in our consult at the time we were going to try to keep the house and car, but my job wouldn't keep me on unless I came back full time, and our loan would have increased by next year and we would have gone under anyways. We did find a new place to rent, and stopped paying the mortgage(thanks to people here! got it before the credit went bad. saved up our money to move) we have 100k unsecured, 30k in the remaining car(upside down in that), and 4 PMSI's that basically is all our home furnishings. Without the house(no equity, already looked into that i.e. short sale, refi, etc.), we become no assets. with filing our bills and secured debts and legal payments(IRS, Support), we would qualify with ch 7 with averaging my DH's income - that puts us off until NOV/DEC? I am nervous with the recent repo of the car and my DH getting hit with a lawsuit for garnishment in our state.
Does anyone have any input with this? I am so nervous, I had a credit score of 780 last year, got married/house/stuff and got preggers with a medical condition, hubby has 80k less/year he makes now and can't find work with a higher pay. We are just scraping by living right now and are living on pb&j sandwiches so we can feed our daugther. For me to get a job(can't now with only one car, DH has visitation to keep up with for his son and needs the car for that as well as his extended work hours), is impossible due to the catch 22 of our situation with the new baby. I am so scared of a lawsuit against us till we file. We stopped paying everything in April except our PMSI's and the one car payment we are reaffirming. Filing now due to the "dual income" would lead to a ch 13, which is impossible(we have 150dollars/mo left for our food, no extras at all, god forbid we have an emergency).
I just don't see how with what my DH makes(his IRS and support and our little secured debt pushes us into a "no abuse" hopefully) a trustee will grant us what we want, will they tell me to get a job?? I made good money before. We are starving, but are locked into this lifestyle till we file/341 hearing, etc. etc. and start selling my stuff on ebay or me getting a job working 2 days/mo on the weekend(most I can do cause of the baby and my Dh's work/visitation obligations). In short our income went down ALOT, and didn't get a chance to catch up paying our creditors back, we were, but I got pg and it was a high risk preg. and we lost everything basically. Do trustees care? Do they look at our current situation at all? Or do they just go, oh too bad, you guys made alot of money and thats what we see per the paperwork?
Can you tell I am anxious???
thanks for listening
This is a scary place to be, and its really taking away the joy of our miracle baby sometimes.

[keepmine]

I'd keep working the median income numbers. With no income from you since Mar. and a family of 3 you may not need to wait that long to file.
Unless you are gonna keep those appliances {rhe pmsi}, I'd quit paying those. Tell the creditor they're at the house.
It takes some time to get sued. They sued you today, all you need do is file a general denial and demand a trial and it'll be months before the trial is docketed.
Try and relax. This too shall pass. I think you are wise looking beyond the bk and thinking about increasing your income.
Nobody will tell you to get a job. Having a baby and a spouse choosing to stay home is not abusing the bk system.

[sodone]

Thanks keep - the PMSI's are actually our house furniture(living room, dining room, our bedroom set - stupid stupid we didn't get to pay those off), we have a best buy card too, which is an extra fridge, and our 2 televisions.
So basically we own our bed, and a couch. Pretty sad how maxed out we became. My DH's drop in income happened in Dec 06, and he had some extra work but he got let go, hence the drastic drop in income. We figured out last night that due to the PTO/sick time I was given(it was the atty retainer basically that all that "extra" money paid for), so it looks like I actually got paid until May(it totals about 4 weeks of more income) when we do the median figures.

We have a culligan water softener that we are not paying on(PMSI), its in our old home, which is going into foreclosure in July - I told the finance company that they can come get the softener, but the rep said that "they don't do that". I advised them again that they need to get it due to the house going into foreclosure and its not going to be available to get for long. I don't know how to handle that one. Since they might do the lawsuit thing first before we can file, how do I do that denial? Can I get the bk atty to do it prior to us filing? We are calling him Monday to give all of our paperwork, I don't know if he will just try to file and tell us that we need to do 13, or if he is willing to look at it from the big picture and advise us to hold off.

From what I have read, we really need to be our own advocates, even with atty's re: the bk. I don't want anything missed, and it sounds like with the deficiencey coming our way for the car reposession, and our home being foreclosed, time is better than us filing now and halting everything, plus risking looking like a ch 13 when clearly thats not our current situation. The home is in my name, and the car is in DH's name, so that somewhat stinks that we don't just have bk without the other black marks on our names when it comes down to rebuilding.

[JRScott]

The following is my experience

I stopped paying pretty much all my credits cards in late 2005/early 2006. One of the longest unpaid ones, sent me a civil summons. Basically in North Carolina they have to do that before they seek garnishment etc. I got the summons from the Sheriff. He explained it to me a little. I signed for it acknowledging I had received it. In it I had 30 days to reply. I used that time to finish some research and get some information together and retain my lawyer.

I wasn't able to pay the lawyer fully for another month. But after I retained the lawyer I heard from the guys suing me once. They took her name and number down, and I didn't hear no more. The lawyer included the civil summons in the bk paperwork as well.

If possible it would be best to probably wait out the 6 months if you've not been served. However if you've already fully paid the lawyer they might wonder why so long passed between paying him and filing.

If we might ask:

When was the last check you received, what date? This is important because if they gave you a lump check say in April which included May's stuff, then the income was earned in April not May .

You are a household of 3, what state do you live in?

When was the BestBuy card used to purchase the Fridge and Televisions? You want at least 90 days to have passed and preferably more from that date to have passed.

[sodone]

thanks JR for the questions to help me.

The check was issued May 4th from my employer with the PTO, which entailed 3 weeks PTO - it took some time for it to get processed.

The best buy purchases and the PMSI's(furniture/wicks) were charged in summer 2005, one piece of furniture was charged summer of 2006.

I had a major cash advance from one of my credit cards Aug 2006. The last time I used a credit card(by mistake thought I used my debit visa, they looked exactly alike) was February for a purchase for about 200 bucks.

Other than that the last charge was Nov 2006 for medical treatment.

We haven't touched our cards since Last Nov/Dec, but we pretty much maxed them out last summer and was paying minimums until March of this year. So, I don't know how we "look", I figured the more time the better re: them objecting. We also changed our checking accts to another bank, since some of our CC's were attached to our checking accts, and I didn't want the stress of worrying if they could seize our account. We got a new acct in March of this year when we stopped paying bills, and also moved into the apartment.

We haven't paid the atty yet, so should we not pay him until we really file? Do they look at the fact that we consulted with this atty and stopped paying bills, moved etc. at the same time?We had a free consult in March, but haven't committed to anything. The money is sitting in our account still. We are in California