Question regarding cash advance

[momof3girls]

My husband and I are looking at having to file Ch7 BK. We have about $75K in CC debt built up over years of living beyond our incomes (not proud of that). We also live in a very expensive part of the country and we can't move because of shared custody of my oldest daughter (she will be 18 in 4 years and we are outta here!)

We adopted a toddler from China in February 2005. We started her adoption back in June 2004 and we had to travel to get her in February. The only way we could fund the trip was to use a cash advance on a CC (Sears Mastercard). We probably should have not done this adoption, but the child in question has a disability and if we had halted her adoption she would not have been given a chance to be placed again. We are not sorry we did it, but the financial aspect was hard.

Okay, so here's my question. How long should we wait to file since we had the cash advance ($5000) in late January to fund our trip to China - not a "luxury" for us since it was for an adoption, but I can see where the trustee would consider this a luxury?

Thanks for your help,

MomOf3Girls

[HHM]

That's an interesting set of circumstances. At a minimum, you need to wait 60 days from the date of the cash advance. The reason for that, is that ANY transaction made within 60 days of BK is presumed fraudulent. So you want to get out of the 60 day presumption period.

You are better off waiting 90 days (for other reasons I won't get into here). However, there are no guarantees and I would expect the credit card company to explore reaffirmation options with you. Nevertheless, because of the adoption, they probably won't fight very hard.

[momof3girls]

Thanks for your answer. I wondered if the circumstances would make a difference. I guess we just need a trustee who is sympathetic to the plight of disabled orphans!

Beverly