Reading BK's in the Newspaper

[AAAArt]

For the first time ever in my life, I read the weekly announcements of who had filed for BK. (Wanted to see of ours was in yet). 3 interesting things I noticed:
1. My wife's cousin had filed.
2. Her filing and many others form small towns in our county listed over $100,00 in assets. This is a single woman working 2 jobs. I woondered if hers and others were because they had no loans against their houses (but I wouldn't have valued her house at somewhere between $60 - 80,000) or because small town attorneys just saw things differently or were they not as good.
3. Finally, and this one really threw me. Can anyone explain it, unless it's just to keep a house. One man was listed as Assets...$0 Debts...$453.00
WTF? The filing fee alone was almost 1/2 of his total debt!

[hhou812hh]

For the first time ever in my life, I read the weekly announcements of who had filed for BK. (Wanted to see of ours was in yet). 3 interesting things I noticed:
1. My wife's cousin had filed.
2. Her filing and many others form small towns in our county listed over $100,00 in assets. This is a single woman working 2 jobs. I woondered if hers and others were because they had no loans against their houses (but I wouldn't have valued her house at somewhere between $60 - 80,000) or because small town attorneys just saw things differently or were they not as good.
3. Finally, and this one really threw me. Can anyone explain it, unless it's just to keep a house. One man was listed as Assets...$0 Debts...$453.00
WTF? The filing fee alone was almost 1/2 of his total debt!

Has to be a misprint. Probably something like $45300.00 and they screwed up. Unless this man is very dumb.

[StaciMM]

I agree that the $453 was (hopefully) a typo or something. Regarding your cousin's asset value, the 'asset' total is probably the total value before considering liens. I looked at a couple of petitions on Pacer-and saved them for reference-and the ones w/ houses were like this. One, for example has "$100,000-500,000" checked for estimated assets, where the house is valued at $125,000 and personal property, vehicle owned outright, exempt 401k, etc. is a little over $15,000. Most of the house is mortgaged, though.

[skyan]

I didn't know bankruptcy filings were listed in the newspapers. Is this something new? They'll have to print a book for last week's filer's listings...

What section of the papers are these listed in?

Thanks!

[AAAArt]

I didn't know either until my wife told me. I think that it's only a smaller town type of mentality (gossip, you know). We live in a community of about 120,000 that is the county seat and a lot of prople from surrounding towns read the paper.
In our paper, it's only in on Sundays in the Business section. On Sun. Oct. 16 they had only gotten up to Oct. 4th and there were almost twice as many that week as the week before, which I think was up about 50% over normal.
Should be interesting to watch the next few weeks. I saw a news report on Sun. night showing people lined up at a local courthouse...thought that it was old news from Fri. then came to find out that some of the courthouses had opened on Sat. and Sun. to meet the rush of filers. Mine was filed electronically at 4:30 on Thurs. Oct. 13th and my 341 meeting is still 2 monts out from date of filing, If you filed on the 16th, I'm guessing it might be 3 or 4 months til the 341 around here.

[jennga]

Gosh I sure hope our newspaper doesn't publish bk's. I have never noticed it before but I will sure start looking now. I filed on 9/02 and still didn't get a 341 until oct 28th. At least it is almost here, oh my, next week, YIKES, just realized that. Have been dealing with a serious health scare with hubby in past few weeks and that has kept my mind on other things.

Well, guess I'll look for my name in the funny pages this Sunday

[StaciMM]

I doubt our paper publishes them. Its a large metro area, so even if they do-its no big deal. With so many people having filed recently, I'm sure if I spent enough time reading a list I could find someone I vaguely know-but why bother!

[Annika]

Our area publishes them on a website (not sure if it's published "on paper" or not - I doubt it). I don't read it on a regular basis, but when I do glance at it, there are usually a few people I know. It gives their name, case #, address, and what type of bankruptcy they filed (7, 13, etc.).

[AAAArt]

Annika, What's the difference between your "discharge date" and your "case closed" date. Is that normal? I thought the case was closed when it was discharged.
Don't mean to be nosy, it just gave me one more thing to worry about. Art

[Annika]

Annika, What's the difference between your "discharge date" and your "case closed" date. Is that normal? I thought the case was closed when it was discharged.

The trustee had a concern over the value of our house, and although he discharged the debts in March, he kept the case open until he had someone come out and do an appraisal of the house. Finally he decided it wasn't worth taking, so he abandoned it, and closed the case. (Whew!)

[AAAArt]

Thanks Annika and Congrats!

[theurge]

I think I lucked out - my local paper usually publishes bk's every week and I just checked today's announcements and my name isn't on there. They missed last week probably because there was too many people who filed...

At least thats one less thing to worry about.

[AAAArt]

I think I lucked out - my local paper usually publishes bk's every week and I just checked today's announcements and my name isn't on there. They missed last week probably because there was too many people who filed...

At least thats one less thing to worry about.

If you'll send me there name and address as well as yours, I'll be glad to wirte them for you and ask them to print an "editorial correction" on p.2.
But only if you ask real noce.
Congrats. Art

[AAAArt]

Update...It seems that our local newspaper doesn't want to use any more space than normal to post BK's. The 2 weeks we'd checked befor yesterday were between 50-100. Yesterday, they listed 76. The difference is that where theu use to list a week at a time, yesterday was only Oct. 5 - Oct. 7. We filed on the 13th...I wonder how long it will take them to get to us? Not that I really care, but I figure that there may have been as many as 200 people in our area file between Oct. 7 and the 13th and maybe as many more after we filed until Sunday the 16th. Some of the courts around here remained open over the weekend and had monster lines.
I tend to wonder if the paper only allows half a page for BK's or if there afraid that if they listed too many that they would get complaints from the nosy busy-bodies who read these things. (Looking for a "smiley" which shows sarcasm dripping w/ bitterness.)
Alright, maybe it does bother me a little. Art

[theurge]

If you'll send me there name and address as well as yours, I'll be glad to wirte them for you and ask them to print an "editorial correction" on p.2.
But only if you ask real noce.
Congrats. Art

Cool, lemee get that info over to you right away