WI Ch7 Atty Didn't Include 3 Judgements in Schedules

[Kitju]

I hired a firm to handle my Ch7 BK and it was discharged in March of 2012. Fast forward to now, and I am trying to purchase a house. My LO pointed out that the 6 judgements on my credit all say IIB, but not 'satisfied.' So I contacted the firm that handled my BK to help me out. The attorney that handled my case is no longer with the firm.

I paid them $100 to get these letters sent out, and was told by the head guy of the firm "that it shouldn't be any more than that." Fine. Then his paralegal contacts me because she can't find three (!!!) of the judgements listed in my schedules or in my discharge paperwork. Then she tells me the head guy is assigning this task to another attorney to handle. That new attorney tells me that even though these judgements weren't listed in the schedules, they are still discharged.

Then yesterday, I get notice that there is an outstanding balance of $130 on my account. I paid it- now I am in $230 plus $2000 from 2 years ago. Today I get an email from new attorney saying these three may fight back, which will require more work ($$$) for him.

I really think the firm should eat some of these costs, since their original atty is the one who neglected to put them in the schedules, not me. In fact, I distinctly remember telling the original attorney about these because they were what prompted me to file BK in the first place. In other words, I paid him/the firm to do a job and I think he/they didn't do it properly and now I am supposed to pay again???

Am I completely off base here?

[justbroke]

I will just say that this is the problem with just "scheduling" a judgment without taking any further action. Sure, they were dischargeable and discharged, but that did not cause them to be marked as "satisfied" in the public record (court records). Typically, an attorney would just email the notice of bankruptcy (or some suggestion of bankruptcy) to the state court (or the attorney for the creditor) and hope that this will take care of everything. This is not always the case.

Regardless, if it required more than just sending a letter to the creditor attorney (or other court), most attorneys would charge you extra for taking concrete steps to have the judgments voided/vacated. This seems to just be a case where more concrete steps were necessary to actually vacate the judgments.

If you are concerned as to whether you in fact paid to have the judgments vacated, you need to look at your fee agreement. I am fairly certain that a "no-look" Chapter 7 attorney fees do not include any extra litigation to void or vacate judgments. Typically those are À la carte fees. Most attorneys are glad to just send a simple "letter" to a creditor's attorney to notify them of the bankruptcy, but the extra distance would be positive (concrete) steps to actually have the judgment(s) voided. The latter usually costs more in fees.

(I don't know if that $2,000 for a Chapter 7 is a bargain in Wisconsin.)

[Kitju]

Hi justbroke, thanks for your reply.

The reason I contacted them was to send out letters of satisfaction to the six listed judgements. Not to vacate the judgements, I'm told (by them) that vacating is not an option- because how I understand it vacating would be making it like it never happened. Forgive me if I am intermixing the terms, I'm learning all of this as I go

I'm not concerned whether or not I paid to have them vacated, I most certainly didn't. I'm also not concerned about paying them to send out the letters, I don't have a problem with paying them for new work. My concern is that I paid the original attorney to list ALL of my judgements, not just half of them. Had he listed them all, as he was supposed to do, I wouldn't be facing the possible push back from those not included in the original bk AND therefore wouldn't be having to worry about paying even more fees not to mention what this could do to my credit.

I absolutely take responsibility for not looking at my schedules more closely at the time. Honestly, it was mounds of papers to sign and because I was paying a professional to handle this for me, I had a certain level of trust that everything was included. Especially the items that I told him about.

I'm not trying to get free work out of them. I just don't feel I should have to pay for the extra work caused by their attorney's failure to do his job properly when I paid them/him to do it right the first time.

(The 2K wasn't a bargain, I was told it was going to be 1k)

[justbroke]

I see the issue. The judgments were issued before you filed. You were just trying to get them listed as satisfied and reported as such. I'm hoping that just sending the judgment creditors a copy of your Discharge order would suffice and you don't need to do too much work. I meant voided not vacated, so I did use the wrong term (because void and vacate are two different things in the legal world!).

(I used "voided" because there is a process within the bankruptcy process to actually void different types of liens including judgment liens. I am unsure if your liens were recorded and became judgment liens, so I was talking about voiding/vacating the lien itself.)

I hope that your former attorney firm is helping you sort through this. If you were a no asset Chapter 7 case, then everything should have been discharged. In some hyper-technical district you may be required to re-open the old case, add the creditors, and then have the case closed again. The affects of this opening and closing on your credit is unknown (the close date could change causing your bankruptcy to re-age). These are things to talk about with the law firm. Hopefully they will guide you to the best course of action. That action may just be a letter and discharge order to the creditor emphasizing that the debt was dischargeable and discharged.

[Kitju]

I apologize if I wasn't clear, glad you were able to decipher what I meant

Yes, these are judgements that were there to start with, and yes I am trying to get them listed as satisfied, not vacated or voided. As far as I know, WI isn't a hyper-technical regarding this stuff, and I was a no asset case.

The firm is willing to help me, but they want me to pay in order to do so. I maintain that their atty screwed up, and therefore they should pay to fix this part about disputing and proving to the creditors- because that wouldn't have happened if the original atty had just put them on the schedules in the first place like I told him to do. Again, I am totally fine with having paid them $200 for the new work they have done regarding sending out the letters of satisfaction. It's this aftermath stuff that I am crying foul on.

[justbroke]

That makes sense to me. Perhaps you can come to some mutual agreement where they (the law firm) will disgorge themselves of part of the fee(s) to deal with these missing judgments.

[keepmine]

I don't think yourlawyer messed up.
From your first post, you say all 6 are IIB meaning they did get included.
I'd just pay 'em. This battle isn't worth fighting over a few hundred dollars.

[brokehmowner]

Did you have a fee agreement? My fee agreement specifically stated pre-existing judgments was extra.