Please Help!!!!!

[outofcontrol]

I will end with my questions and start off by explaining our situation.

We have optained an attorney and I'm getting ready to file chapter 7 the first of June. We're filing 5 credit cards and several medical bills. This amounts to about $50,000.

All our banking is through a Credit Union with my husbands job and we have the house and 1 vehicle financed with them. The payments are deducted from his check.

We also owe Chase Auto for our second vehicle and have a loan on a travel trailer. We owe more than what the travel trailer and vehicles are worth so attorney said we shouldn't have a problem keeping them.

We have always had excellent credit and never been late but my husbands job recently cut his salary and he may be facing leaving on early retirement within the next few months. In fact he may be leaving during the time we file bankruptcy. So his salary would be zero at that point.

My questions are:

1: If husband does leave his job he will recieve a lump sum portion (17,000 net) from his pension plan and approx. 25,000 from his 401K. Can it be taken from us? We will need this money to live off of while looking for another job. One idea we tossed around is to pay off the vehicles with it if he finds a job soon after.

2: My parents have loaned us most of the money to pay the attorney and we agreed to pay them back monthly. We owe about $200 now to the attorney. After reading all the post here I'm worried about this situation because we will be paying my parents back during our filing.

3: Will we have to stop our automatic deposits to the credit union and live off of cash after or during our filing? We get a discounted interest rate on our loans for having automatic deducitons and I would hate to loose that.

4: I've listed all the medical bills that I know about but there may be a stray one show up after I file. What happens then, do I just pay it?

5: We have been to the attorneys office 2 times and still haven't met him. Is this a normal process? We met with one person for our initial visit, filled out all the forms about our expenses and income. He answered all of our questions we had at the time. The 2nd time I went in and met with another person who made copies of all our bills, insurance, etc.

6: I'm still confused about the new law. What aspects are already in place?


Sorry for so many questions but we won't meet with our attorney again until we have paid in full. I'd appreciate any advice you feel would help us out here.
Thanks!

[HHM]

First, these are all questions you need to ask your attorney, but here are some preliminary comments that may help.

1. This is tricky, pensions are usually exempt, but it would be cleaner if he were able to keep his job through the BK.

2. Although you are supposed to list all your creditors, simply don't mention it.

3. I am not sure exactly what your asking, if the Credit Union automatically dedcuts money from your checking account to pay loans, that will stop whether you want it to or not, the CU will stop the auto deductions. If your talking about direct deposit of your paychecks, that shouldn't stop.

4. You can amend your petition anytime before discharge, so if a creditor comes out of the woodwork, you can add them. If you discover a new creditor after discharge, you have too options, reopen your case to add them, or simply pay them.

5. Its common for higher volumn practices, but you should have met with an attorney even for a few minutes by now.

6. The homestead exemption cap is in effect now, but most of the provisions do not take effect until October 17.

[outofcontrol]

Thanks for your answers! This has been very helpful.

We are pretty sure my husband will be able to wait until at least Nov. to leave the company and we hope to file bk by mid June. So by the time he gets his lump sum it would be at least the end of Dec. We could put it off if we needed to for bk reasons but really need the money to live off of.

Thanks again!