Can you use rebate check to hire attorney

[Web66]

Hello. I have been "lurking" around here forever and everyone has given such great information. I knew eventually my husband and I were going to have to file over our credit card debt and we have too much income for Chap 7 together. Our mortgage is current and no other secured debt.

We are going to get divorced. I will still be over the median but he will definitely be under. He won't be able to survive paying the ccs in his name and I can't even pay mine. We have old, paid off cars and no equity in house. I met with a divorce atty and then a bk attorney a few months ago. The bk attorney told me he could file the 7 and my 13 as they will be separate. In the meantime, we tried to reconcile for a while but it did not work out. Since we were already in the red, the $$ I had saved further dwindled while I delayed the inevitable. I have enough for one bk and divorce. Now we should be getting that rebate this month. I was wondering if we can use it to pay the attorney. I know we can get the rest of the $ when we stop paying the ccs (later this month) but what would we do about this check? We surely won't be filing til June or July.

Just wondering if anyone had any input. Also, how bad do the collection calls get at work? I am worried about our receptionist getting too many calls for me. Thanks for any advice.

[epiphany]

Hello. I have been "lurking" around here forever and everyone has given such great information. I knew eventually my husband and I were going to have to file over our credit card debt and we have too much income for Chap 7 together. Our mortgage is current and no other secured debt.

We are going to get divorced. I will still be over the median but he will definitely be under. He won't be able to survive paying the ccs in his name and I can't even pay mine. We have old, paid off cars and no equity in house. I met with a divorce atty and then a bk attorney a few months ago. The bk attorney told me he could file the 7 and my 13 as they will be separate. In the meantime, we tried to reconcile for a while but it did not work out. Since we were already in the red, the $$ I had saved further dwindled while I delayed the inevitable. I have enough for one bk and divorce. Now we should be getting that rebate this month. I was wondering if we can use it to pay the attorney. I know we can get the rest of the $ when we stop paying the ccs (later this month) but what would we do about this check? We surely won't be filing til June or July.

Just wondering if anyone had any input. Also, how bad do the collection calls get at work? I am worried about our receptionist getting too many calls for me. Thanks for any advice.

Yes, you can use the rebate to pay for your attorney.

As for the calls at work, answer the phone at home or return the calls placed to there, and they'll have no reason to call you at work. There may be an unscrupulous collector here or there who still tries to do this, but in general they basically only call you at work or call other people if they can't get a hold of you at home. If you do talk to them, ask them to put in in your file that you may not be reached at work. Most will respect this but as we've learned on this forum, there are always exceptions.

Also, if I understand you correctly you are current on your bills right now and you plan on filing in June or July. The calls should not get bad in that amount of time anyway.

Good Luck,

ep

[Web66]

Epiphany, I owe you a long overdue thanks for your answer. Thank you so much.

I was also wondering what do I tell the collectors when they call--I do need to go about a month of not paying now to get the rest of the $$ I might need to file so I won't have a lawyer's no. the first month.

Thanks.

Wendy

[poor@budgeting]

You could ignore the calls at home but they will call all the numbers that they have including work and will keep calling until they hear back from you.
Answer the call(s) and informed the CC company that money is tight and you are working on a 'solution' - should give you another week or so. Once you have an atty, you can defer all call to him/her.

[jwbbx]

I do need to go about a month of not paying now to get the rest of the $$ I might need to file so I won't have a lawyer's no. the first month.

Hi Web66,

You really don't need ALL of the $ in place to go attorney shopping, in fact you may be better served to not have it so that you don't jump at the first guy. Make appointments with 3-4 and see who you feel comfortable with. They all (at least here) offer free consults. Once you feel comfortable with one then you can set up a retainer without paying 100%. If it's a 7 he/she won't file until you get it all paid, but they might let you refer the calls to them once there's a retainer in place. I'm doing a 13 and my attorney has been fielding calls for me for a couple of weeks.

I stopped paying in late April and started getting the calls at exactly 14 days after the first missed due date. My experience with them has been they only want to hear about when you can pay. If you tell them not today they'll ask when. If you tell them you're not sure they'll call you back in a few days. They are very persistent, and they call on each card if you have multiples with one creditor. The ones that I've given the attorney information to have stopped calling. Once you mention an attorney they will ask if you're filing BK (some will not take attorney info until you answer YES), but the calls have stopped from those that have this info from me. BTW none of them were particularly nasty, they're just trained to not take I Can't Pay You as an answer and you have to deal with that.

Hope this helps.