Brand new, Question about book advance and filing
Hi there. 
Happy to meet you all, but not happy to be in this position. Just about every calculator, questionnaire and individual has told us we should probably file for bankruptcy. My husband and I have lots of credit card debt, medical and dental debt, etc, and my husband's income doesn't even cover our rent plus utilities. I'm a stay at home mom with an infant (unexpected, high risk pregnancy, $$$ bills) and we just moved back east to help care for my mother who has stage 4 cancer, so I'm not able to help out with extra income right now. We own basically nothing. No house, hand-me-down electronics, and one used car worth next to nothing (but we still owe $800 on it). Here's the rub. My husband sold a book last year. He received one half of the advance ($12,000) at the end of 2010. That covered our cross country move and the down money on our rental (needless to say, the landlord wanted a few extra bucks to get over his doubts about us). He'll be getting the second half of the advance after he hands in the finished manuscript, so possibly next summer. My husband thinks we should take that money and try to settle with some of our creditors, but we owe more than twice that much and it would once again leave us without a dime to live on. So, how does Chapter 7 fit in with all this? Would they take the advance money after we file? It's not an unexpected income. We know we're getting it at some point. Should we file before he gets the money? We already get calls from collectors all day long. Could we give the money to my mother, who, I feel terrible for saying, has been paying for our diapers and gasoline for some time now? How would this work? Every time he makes extra money from freelance work we give it to the creditors, but it never seems to get us anywhere and we're left penniless again. Advice? 
Happy to meet you all, but not happy to be in this position. Just about every calculator, questionnaire and individual has told us we should probably file for bankruptcy. My husband and I have lots of credit card debt, medical and dental debt, etc, and my husband's income doesn't even cover our rent plus utilities. I'm a stay at home mom with an infant (unexpected, high risk pregnancy, $$$ bills) and we just moved back east to help care for my mother who has stage 4 cancer, so I'm not able to help out with extra income right now. We own basically nothing. No house, hand-me-down electronics, and one used car worth next to nothing (but we still owe $800 on it). Here's the rub. My husband sold a book last year. He received one half of the advance ($12,000) at the end of 2010. That covered our cross country move and the down money on our rental (needless to say, the landlord wanted a few extra bucks to get over his doubts about us). He'll be getting the second half of the advance after he hands in the finished manuscript, so possibly next summer. My husband thinks we should take that money and try to settle with some of our creditors, but we owe more than twice that much and it would once again leave us without a dime to live on. So, how does Chapter 7 fit in with all this? Would they take the advance money after we file? It's not an unexpected income. We know we're getting it at some point. Should we file before he gets the money? We already get calls from collectors all day long. Could we give the money to my mother, who, I feel terrible for saying, has been paying for our diapers and gasoline for some time now? How would this work? Every time he makes extra money from freelance work we give it to the creditors, but it never seems to get us anywhere and we're left penniless again. Advice?
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