How long till you decided to file chpt7?

[Blue_Ray]

Just curious to see how many of you stop paying on all your credit cards and then decided to file for chpt 7?

If so, why so long?

[CindyLou]

I stopped paying in June of 2002 and filed October 2005. I had decided I was filing just prior to when I stopped paying. I had also decided to wait 6 months because I had bought "luxury" goods on a few cards and a few cash advances. But then I had to move from Texas to California so I had to wait another 6 months for residency. Well, then I wasn't getting calls, hardly any letters and no lawsuits. So I just waited it out til right before the law was going to change and I had to file. I actually filed the day before the law changed.

[Blue_Ray]

Wow, so you stopped paying on all your CC's since 02 and filed in 05? Really? I bet those late fees were crazy, huh?

I stopped making payments now for not even two months. My highest cc company; Capitol One sent me a letter that they wanted to help. Well I asked them for the past 3 months and they'd refuse to lower my APR% rate from 22.7% from my 3% prior. Well screw them now. Since then..... All my other CCs been sending late fee payments, its scary. I just hope I can get R done! As Larry the cable guy says it

[CindyLou]

yea, some of the balances doubled! but I knew I was filing and I was doing a 7 so I wasn't to concerned.Yea, they will be all willing to help once they think you are going to file. Just disregard them and go through with your plan.

[JRScott]

I too had not paid most of my credit cards in little over a year when I finally filed. You get a lot of mail from them, and you get lots of calls.

Finally one of them early this year served me with a civil summons. So I decided to file . I needed to probably have filed 2 years ago, but I was trying and hoping for some way to pay it off.

Much like yourself I was fed up particularly with this one that sent me a summons, I had explained to them in 2005 about my hardship case at the time and they refused to work with me at all, so needless to say they didn't get any money after that. Then in Dec 2006 they called and made a big deal of it, once again they threatened to sue me and once again wouldn't offer any deal, so I said well if you want to sue me go ahead, I'll just file bankruptcy and then you'll get nothing.

So they served me papers in March 2007 I think it was. So I had 30 days to respond to it and used that time to retain a lawyer in April, and then got everything filed in May .

(Capital One is also one of my creditors, and I hadn't paid them in probably 6 months before filing bankruptcy)

[possumfat]

I stopped paying in October of 2002 and filed in October of 2005. I battled the letters and phone calls thinking I could make it till the SOL (5 years) qualified. Mid 2005 the summons came and I knew it was time, if I had to do it all over again I would have filed in 2002.

[FilingOnMyOwn]

I went over 3 years with no job whatsover before I filed. Couldn't even get the money together to file if I wanted to.

[PaKettle]

I knew I was PROBABLY going to file a few months ago. I could see how getting less work and my wife's unemployment running out and more credit card debt as of a few months ago was going to catch up to us.

I was hoping maybe we'd win the lotto or something ;-) and we wouldn't have to file. Yet I knew that unless we both started making better money we would have to file.

So I figured it would be about Sept. before all that would catch up to us, but actually it caught up to us 2 weeks ago. I couldn't make my big $500 personal loan payment, so I figured "Okay, it's time to stop paying all of them. No point paying some and not the others. May as well save up to file bankruptcy" which we will do in September (waiting 3 months because I stupidly made a couple balance transfers to pay off Amex, thinking we might keep that account. Then I found out that Amex doesn't allow that.) Then we also had to buy a new tv because our's died a few weeks ago, so now we're waiting -AT LEAST - 3 months so as to not have it look like fraud. We'll let the attorney decide how to handle all that.

Haven't talked to an attorney yet but plan to find several and make appt's within the next few weeks.