The totals are in...

[Keebler]

- More than $125,000 in unsecured debt -- virtually all credit cards.

- Less than $95,000 in priority debt including a home and two automobiles. (Home is only $70,000)

- Family of five with just over $50,000 of annual income in Texas.

- Solidly below median and pass means test with flying colors.

- Almost no disposable income and clearly no disposable income when six months of medical bills are included.

- Most recent charges are sixty days ago and the last true cash advance was $1,500 more than 70 days ago. A suprise overdraft protection 30 days ago probably counts as a cash advance and I'm avoiding paying it back to avoid a preferential transfer situation.

- I was current with all of my cards right up until 60 days ago when I stopped paying any of them.


Needless to say, chapter 7 is in the near future. Am I going to have trouble getting that much credit card debt discharged? Any suggestions or advice to avoid trouble?

I've chosen a trustee as my attorney and talked with him a couple of months back. I estimated my debt as $75,000 at that time so there's going to be some explaining to do. I haven't retained him but expect to have money available to do so by the end of the month.

[Lindsay]

Alot of people don't know what they owe and are really afraid to face it so I wouldn't think the trustee attorney would have a problem. I thought I owed about $40 -$45,000 and when I added all the totals up recently, it was $80,000+! I can't even imagine what we even bought as we don't have any luxury items and all of our appliances, furniture, and televisions are well over 5 years old. Even my computer is 6 years old. That's probably what happened to you too, you probably never imagined that your debt was that high!

I'm intrigued with using a trustee for an attorney. I guess he would know what the trustees in your area will tolerate. I guess they only get $60 in a no assets case for their trustee duties so it is probably alot more profitable to handle the bankruptcy. How was he at the consultation?

[lrprn]

- More than $125,000 in unsecured debt -- virtually all credit cards.Am I going to have trouble getting that much credit card debt discharged? Any suggestions or advice to avoid trouble?

There's no limit to how much debt can be discharged in Ch 7.

Since you owe over $100K unsecured, it appears that local trustees and US trustees look at those cases more closely. But the Means Test is the Means Test. If your lawyer's figures show that you have no disposable income and as long as there's no hidden assets, recent luxury purchases, preferential payments, etc, lurking in the shadows, then you should be good to go.

[SinkingFast]

I can relate to not knowing the level of debt.

We were just writing checks, writing checks, paying minimums every month. Never really looking at the balances. Until we started running out of money.

We sat down one day, with all the CC statements, and added it all up. I was horrified. A tad over $120K and nothing to show for it.

When we started Consulting attnys, we did know how deep the Doo-Doo was. If it hadn't been for that one defining moment, we wouldn't have known either.

I'm sure BK attnys see a lot of that. People who don't really know how deep their waters are.

[Keebler]

I'm intrigued with using a trustee for an attorney. I guess he would know what the trustees in your area will tolerate. I guess they only get $60 in a no assets case for their trustee duties so it is probably alot more profitable to handle the bankruptcy. How was he at the consultation?

I've posted elsewhere how I used the court calandar to weed out the local attornies who where either Chapter 13 pushers, bankruptcy mills or onesie-twosie part-timers. I came up with a list of three firms I planned to visit.

At that time I was a different kind of client that most firms could cope with because I wasn't looking for information on bankruptcy and I wasn't nieve and scared. (I have all of this great information here.) I knew I was going to file and how, and I had a reasonable grip on the laws and the associated issues. I was there to interview them and two of the three would only run me through the standard bankruptcy preparation and leave my questions until the last ten minutes.

The third guy was great because he listened to me right from the beginning. He answered all of my questions and complimented me on the preperation he could see that I had done. His attitude was completely different and kind of "what can I do for you?"

He was also the least expensive of the three! It was after I had chosen him that I stumbled across the fact that he is also a trustee. Later even, I found that a relative had been referred to him years ago and had nothing but praise at that time.

My next visit will be soon and I'll pay him his fee and lay out all of the details in front of him.