need advice on bankruptcy situation.

[sunzhu35]

Hello everyone, I am new to this forum and really appreciate if someone here who's knowleadgable about bankruptcy matters can help me out. This is concerning my mom and dad and thier credit situation, and i am thier son. Due to buying a house and a failed business attempt by me in the year 2006 and 2007 our income took a dive and unsecured borrowing went up. in the middle of 2007 our total debt was 15k total. But today as it stand we owe $53k and right now we are having trouble paying the monthly minimum on 5-6 different cards. To help pay them off last week my mom took a $10k personal check loan from Bank of America where we already owe $7.5k. Meanwhile yesterday my father's oncology doctor said he has cancer and has about a year to live at maximum. With my father's income we were barely able to pay minimum on all our debts. But without him we can't pay zilch. meanwhile he's been on leave for 3 months so no money coming in right now from my fathers, i had a loss in my business and my mom is the only stable earner. We have been living off of our credit card for the last 3-9 months for the above stated reasons and now we owe $53k in total including last week's personal loan. so I got into thinking that BK is probably our best option(for mom and dad). Now my question is how do i help my parents get out of this mess, my goal is to have all of the debts discharged. I've been reading up on BK and have an overall knowledge about it, but i'd like to know what are the best options that i have to reach my goal and how is it going to work out.

Thank you,
Sid

[my4devils]

Sid,

I am so sorry to hear about your father's cancer- it sounds like you have alot on your plate right now. With your complicated situation it is probably a good idea to sit down with your parents and gather all of the necessary information in regards to the BK. Then make appointments with a few bankruptcy lawyers in your area who can give guidance about what steps to take. There are a few sticky areas in there so definitely seek professional advice!

[keepmine]

First thing you need to do is help your mother out. You need to find a stable job as well and fast.
Just not enough info to help with the bk question. Will your father leave any sort of estate? Are your parents debt joint?
For sure, don't file until all of your fathers medical and final expenses are known.

[sunzhu35]

The hospital is actually pretty cheap and my father qualifies for care from Hill-Burton program which is a federal program for people without insurance. And according to our estimation that we will owe from 3k-5k in debts... so it's good except their hospital care sucks so bad.

[sunzhu35]

some specific questions

Man I've been up for over 24 hours reading up on bankruptcy and saw an attorney yesterday in the morning and got a lot of good feedback from him. Now that I have some more information i got some specific question that i have to ask you guys.

#1 issue is the matter of the 10k personal check loan that my mother took out on seventh of march of this year, and it seems to me that might be a problem. My mom took out the loan to pay off a secured debt (the last secured debt that we have) of $1k, buying a truck for my bother for work purpose ($1k-$2k), pay a personal debt to a friend, and doing some needed work on the house. now the thing is according to our calculation we will have $3k left after doing all the things I listed. now when we go to bankruptcy what do we do with that money, do we keep them in cash in hand, cuz we didn't put it in the bank. and wait six months and file for bankruptcy. I wanna keep the money cuz with my father dying off, and with bills and so much debt there's no security money for us anymore, hopefullly my business will pick up and i actually have a part time job which I didn't mention at first. so what can i do with the money--- buy jewelery? give it as a gift to a friend or my brother? then wait for 6 months then file bankruptcy? what are my options here?

#2 the personal check is from bank of america with whom my mother has a credit card and she owes them 7k on the credit card so in total we will owe them 17k is that big enough number for bank of america to object to... what are the possible scenarios.

#3 my mother being more frugal then mr. Burns she saved up some money about $3k cash in hand, from selling my old car to any money that we get in hand, and leftovers from my brother cashed paycheck. so how can i protect that money. and also if i have never put that money in bank how come the trustee will ever know about it(since they are from many miscellaneous sources and personal business done in cash.)

#4 Th lawyer who i saw today said that when our bank account hits $0 then we file for bankruptcy, i a thinking is that necessary. we only have 300 bucks in it anyway.

#5 what's the best way to look for lawyers and how would some of the experienced members here look for a lawyer. any websites or organizations out there where i could get lawyer recommendations, i'm looking especially for a record of win/loss ratio of lawyers.

so basically my plan is get money under some of the exemptions
and keep existing cash in hand and file at the end of this year. we gotta live like somalians but we gotta make it thru. Do you guys think that's a sensible plan and if not what are the pitfalls and what should be my plan of action.

My parents debt:-

bank of america CC 7k - mom
bank of america loan 10k -mom
chase cc 7.5k - mom
amex cc 6.5k - mom
discover cc - 7k - mom
chase cc - 12k - dad

We are a family of 4. mom works fulltime and so does my father but on medical leave till december, my brother has a part time job and a student, i have my own small business(right now incurring losses) and have a part time job. we are a zero asset family 1 house, 2 car family. given all that my goal is to discharge of all my parent's debts.