No Assets, lots of debt

[bleepball]

My husband and i have under 480 credit scores. He has a foreclosure and a repo in the past 2 years (messy divorce) and about 10,000 in other debt cc, merchandise, medical. I have about 14000 in cc debt, i have a vehicle i am paying for and is in good standing. my father in law co signed for my husband work car and we are in good standing on it. we rent. only 1 income. do we attempt to pay off my debt first with cccs or another agency and attempt to purchase a home (our ultimate goal) i have never purchased a home. or do we file bk??? i stay at home with our daughter, We make appx 40000/yr. we will have a nice tax refund which would put a dent in debt but is it worth it? my husbands house shows almost 100000 lost....what do we do?

[freshstart2006]

CCCS will ruin your credit as much or even more than Bankruptcy. If you think you can pay back your debts without CCCS, do that. If you think you cannot pay off those debts, I would file bankruptcy if I were you.

I work in mortgage underwriting for a large nationwide company, and we do not touch files with CCCS. However, we do FHA files for people that have been discharged for 2 years and show good history since the bk.

[poorme]

mr freshstart - what conditions does fha allow for underwriting in LESS than 2 years? I was previously told that verifiable hardship case might be possible.

[SinkingFast]

I actually read in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that they will consider people who've filed BK in less than 2 years. If the person had some sort of life altering event. With good credit prior to that time. And verifiable rent payments history since the BK.

I guess there are blanket rules and then case by case considerations as well.

[bleepball]

thanks for the advice..honestly we have not done anything to any creditors except cars and dont know if we want to bother with a bk or just let them go off our report in 7 years

[FilingOnMyOwn]

thanks for the advice..honestly we have not done anything to any creditors except cars and dont know if we want to bother with a bk or just let them go off our report in 7 years

They may not come off your report in seven years. It could get sold from collection agency to collection agency, and each one that buys the debt after that and reports it could be on your report for 7 years. It will cost you less to fix it now than to wait until then to do it.

[keepmine]

7 years is the max that a bad debt can be reported no matter how many times it's sold. Plenty of FTC opinion letters plus, a very prominent enforcement action.

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2004/05/ncogroup.htm

In turn, this date is used by the credit bureaus to measure the maximum seven-year reporting period the FCRA mandates

[FilingOnMyOwn]

7 years is the max that a bad debt can be reported no matter how many times it's sold. Plenty of FTC opinion letters plus, a very prominent enforcement action.

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2004/05/ncogroup.htm

In turn, this date is used by the credit bureaus to measure the maximum seven-year reporting period the FCRA mandates

What the law states and what the creditors do are two entirely different things. It can take alot of time, money, and effort to enforce the laws that they are supposed to abide by.

[keepmine]

If a consumer educates themselves, a couple of letters and a filing fee is about all the time and expense required {if you have to go to court}.
Me. I've kept my last year of cc statements plus, all the dunning letters from the OC's. I'm loaded for bear if anybody tries to reage the debts IIB'ed.

Getting back to the OP's question. A foreclosure with a $100K deficiency needs to be dealt with. I'd suggest they seek some legal advice if foreclosure deficiency can be pursued in their state. That's a huge sword hanging over their head.
The rest of it, that's still a lot of debt on $40K income. BK will likely be the best option.

[SamanthaJones]

More people have sinking credit scores by the day.

The average person is awash and can't survive financially- this year there will be an explosion of delinquencies, foresclosures, bankrupctcies, and the like. The more of that happens, the more the average credit score drops, the more easily accessible refinancing and etc. will necessarily become even for bankrupts. If not, then the economy would simply collapse- not that Bush is not heading it that way, as it is?