Newbie here need some help...

[momof2]

Hello to all,
I have been a lurker on here for a few months now and my husband and I are ready to speak to an attorney, but have a few questions. We are a married couple with 2 young children (5 and 3months). My husband makes $35k a year and I work part-time in retail make about $7k a year (I stay home with the kids, as child care is expensive.) Well we have gotten ourselves into a really big mess and are trying our hardest to dig out on our own but can't seem to. We have about $13k in CC debt, $4k on a loan we took out last year, $3k in doctors bills, and owe about $17k on our vehicle. We are current on our loan payment, car payment, and about 3 of the CC's.. while the others are now in the process of being sent to collections. I was on bed-rest for about 4months of my pregnancy.
Every month we are short on some bill..and we just don't see a light at the end of this. We also rent our townhouse. Any feedback is appreciated. Also I can't seem to find a website with the means test on it, I see we are well below for a family of 4 in MN.

[justplaintired]

http://www.legalconsumer.com/bankruptcy/bankruptcy-means-test.php?ZIP=30303

Make sure you put in you zip code in the correct area. This will help you somewhat I think. You are well below the median income, as your income is similar to ours. You need to kind of figure out your monthly expenses minus what you would be filing on. For instance, rent/house payment, utilities, groceries.... You can find a list of allowable expenses for BK in your state. You also need to figure out what are your assets? What do you own and what is it's value, your state will have allowable exemptions. All this info is easily found on the web. For instances, household items are priced as if you're having a big garage.

You're on the right track meeting with an attorney.

Oh and welcome to Bkforum!

[momof2]

Thanks so much for the reply.
We have to wait until at least January to file. Would it be smart to meet with an attorney now or wait, the phone calls are never ending. When should we stop paying on our loan (it's for citifinancial and they have a lein on my husbands 94' Grand Prix). I know that BestBuy just sent us to collections.. how long do we have before more action is taken??

[AngelinaCat]

Hi Momof2: It wouldn't hurt to meet with an attorney now, preferrably two or three for consultations. Then when you select one that you feel comfortable with you can tell the people calling that you have retained an attorney and are preparing to file and give them the attorney's contact information. This is what we did--and had the attorney's card taped to the handset of each phone in the house. For the most part everyone took the information and were okay and didn't cause any further trouble.

[momof2]

Ok
What would recommend about stopping the payments to the loan?? I am most worried about this, because I don't want them to take my husbands vehicle.. as they have a lein on it.

[AngelinaCat]

If you are planning on keeping the vehicle, whether you decide to reaffirm the loan, or just do a ride-through, you need to keep making the payments and keep them current as much as possible.

[momof2]

Keep the loan payment current, not the car loan. Sorry to confuse. We want to keep my the car, so we will keep that current, but we have a $4k personal loan that we had to use my husbands paid off 94' as collateral for the loan it is through citifinancial.

[justplaintired]

We met with our attorney in Feb and still haven't filed. We stopped cards then. We did pay off the attorney in Feb. We will be filing hopefully in middle of Aug. We were told to pay on what we intended to keep, which is our house and payments are current and have always been current. All other things we stopped on. If the personal loan holds your DH car as collateral I believe you will need to continue to pay. Sounds like you maybe upside down on that but an attorney can advise you better.

Any secured loans such as cars will either need to be paid on or be prepared to surrender them. You can not keep the cars you owe money on and not pay on them, not even in a BK. Talk to an attorney. Do it soon find out what he recommends. Nothing wrong with preparing for a BK. It's such a big thing, you need to know all your options and what things you can and can't do while going threw one. Also since attorneys are expensive getting the ball rolling now will give you plenty of time to get them paid off and be filed by Jan.

[momof2]

Ok thanks so much for answering my questions.. this is incredibly confusing and I'm trying to read up on it as much as possible. We want to keep both vehicles at this point so we will for sure keep up on the payments. Will most attorneys advise you on what to bring with for your first initial meeting??

[justplaintired]

Yes they will. Some don't have your bring anything. Some do. We took paystubs showing our income and to really make it easier for the attorney we took tax returns for the last 3 yrs. Took our titles to cars along with the KBB value. I was over prepared I think our attorney thought I was nuts. He will also advice on the cars you are paying on. Being that you preparing so far in advance, you will be able to get everything in order before you even file.