Can anyone go on Pacer?

[jessegirl]

Thanks that a relief to here.

[No Gravy]

Hi everyone - thanks for the responses. I am jsut concerned cause I do not want anyone in my family or neighbors to find out. There kids will probably harass the hell out of my kids. I can take the adults passing comments, cause i will tell them off, but the kids have no idea and i wouldn't want them to be the target of our mistake.

Unless there's a lot of lawyers in your family or neighborhood, it shouldn't be a problem. I'd never heard of PACER until getting ready to file BK, and I doubt most people have never heard of it, unless they have a reason to.

[jessegirl]

Hi everyone - thanks for the responses. I am jsut concerned cause I do not want anyone in my family or neighbors to find out. There kids will probably harass the hell out of my kids. I can take the adults passing comments, cause i will tell them off, but the kids have no idea and i wouldn't want them to be the target of our mistake.

[Flamingo]

How long does it stay on pacer? I am surprised in this day and age that you can just look at someones personal information.

Jessegirl....it is a permanent record and always available for public view if someone is looking for it. As long as the powers that be allow it to be public information, it can be viewed either online or at the courthouse. That applies to all of us who have filed. At least they removed the SS numbers from public view.

Some people have googled their name to find their court filing listed on the internet. If you are so concerned about your privacy, the best thing to do if you are going to file is to just not say anything yourself to anyone. Most people will not find out unless you say something or act in a way for them to suspect you are having financial difficulties. In an office setting, lots of personal calls or taking off a lot of time for work to go to appointments become obvious to some coworkers and they may ask what is up. That is time to mention the ill relative in your family or some other excuse if you want to keep talk down.

[No Gravy]

I am surprised in this day and age that you can just look at someones personal information.

Seriously? It's easier now than it's ever been. Heck, you'd be surprised what $50 can get you (and I don't mean porn! lol).

[jessegirl]

How long does it stay on pacer? I am surprised in this day and age that you can just look at someones personal information.

[No Gravy]

I use Voice Over IP (VOIP) from VONAGE, so I just added another "ghost" number (as I call them). It's $4.99 a month and allows me to segregate calls. When that number rings, I *know* it's about the BK.

GrandCentral numbers are merely virtual numbers that can be forwarded anywhere, but MagicJack and Gizmo are VoIP's. Wish I'd had them and thought of it *before* I defaulted on any of my accounts. As the meltdown was happening I went into my accounts online profiles and changed my phone numbers...but some of them wouldn't save the change.

Stalker! See, that's why I have the special phone number... so the Stalkers can't find me!!! LOL

Buhahahahaha! So either I'm an extraordinary stalker (since I found you), or you suck at hiding! lmao

[shabam]

Ok, But can anyone who goes in and looks at Pacer, will they be able to see my SS# and address etc.? And does it cost you money as soon as you go into Pacer? I posted this here cause I am going to file a chapter 7 in a few weeks.

I remember seeing another thread you created were you asking about privacy, in relation to your employer finding out about filing for bankruptcy. Once someone files for bankruptcy their bankruptcy petition is available for anyone on pacer to see. While a SSN can be hidden, everything else is available for others to view; Which means most of the BK forms you filled.

The only way to hide your information is don't file for BK.

[justbroke]

Another excellent tidbit I never would have known about! I have the use of several virtual phone numbers (one from GrandCentral, one from Magicjack, one from Gizmo, etc), and now I'll be sure to put on of those down as my phone number.

I use Voice Over IP (VOIP) from VONAGE, so I just added another "ghost" number (as I call them). It's $4.99 a month and allows me to segregate calls. When that number rings, I *know* it's about the BK.

Stalker! See, that's why I have the special phone number... so the Stalkers can't find me!!! LOL

[No Gravy]

I just saw my CELL PHONE number on a Claim. Sheesh. I don't want everyone knowing that! I set up a phone number JUST FOR THE CASE.. but now my cell phone number is public.

Another excellent tidbit I never would have known about! I have the use of several virtual phone numbers (one from GrandCentral, one from Magicjack, one from Gizmo, etc), and now I'll be sure to put on of those down as my phone number.

They ring to my home phone (or cell if I want), but offer a better level of blocking and privacy than giving out my home or cell number. I typically use the GrandCentral # when i run ads (to sell items) in Craigslist, just so every whackjob with Internet access doesn't have my home number.

Thanks for the tip. And i swear, I'm *not* stalking you today! It just seems like it

[justbroke]

Hi jessegirl: What we do is when we see a new entry in our case on PACER, since it comes up in PDF format, we save it to a BK7 folder on our hard drive and give it a name that corresponds to the entry number as PACER has in it index to History/Documents. That way we can go back later and examine to document as many times as we want to w/o having to pay the 8 cents each page. PACER can be addictive......

Excellent advice! I do almost the same thing. I have a well organized directory structure on my PC. I back it up DAILY as I have filed pro se and my entire case and history are there.

Here's how I have mine set up:

• 00 00 Pending Motions -- these are "shortcuts" to actual pending documents (which stay in their respective folder)
• 00 00 CASE XX-XXXXX-XXX -- contains everything filed and received from PACER (notices, orders, etc)
• 00 01 FOR TRUSTEE -- for the Trustee
• 00 01 TO DO - IMPORTANT -- Other Than Motions, Objections
• 00 02 PLAN -- The Plan
• 00 03 CLAIMS -- Claims (see below)
• 00 04 FILED -- Documents FILED with the Court (organized into sub-folder with the date -- e.g. 20080824)
• 00 05 MOTIONS -- Drafts of Motions
• 00 88 STATE STATUTES -- Statutes
• 00 99 OTHER -- Junk

The CLAIMS folder is organized by Claims. It looks like this

• 01 - SOME CREDITOR #1
• 02 - SOME CREDITOR #2
• 03 - SOME CREDITOR #3

The first number is the Claim number filed. So claim number 1 get folder "01 - SOME CREDITOR #1". The numbers are used for "sorting" the folder! Keeps them in order. Inside of each CLAIM folder I do two things.

• DOCUMENTATION -- contains the actual claim and supporting documentation submitted by the creditor
• OBJECTION -- ONLY if I objected to it
• NO OBJECTION -- A Blank Folder if NOT objected to

That's pretty much it for the organization. I also have a master Spreadsheet which tracks money I spent on delivery (service) to creditors, attorneys and other contact information. I also have a Form B22C in a spreadsheet to do quick what-if calculations, as well as a "payments" spreadsheet which will also tell me what happens if I modify a payment to a creditor.

Okay, I'm crazy... I know... but you MUST stay organized if you're a pro se filer, and it doesn't hurt to be organized if you have a lawyer.

[justbroke]

My bad, I haven't been on PACER in a while, I remember that I was only able to access cases in my district, but oh well.

You're only partially bad. You access PACER by "District". So, if you normally log into the Western District of Massachusetts, you can only access that District's cases. In order to view cases in the Southern District of Florida, you'd have to go to that specific web site and log in there.

I've used this in doing research on case rulings and wanted to get the more gory detail of the case (filed plan, claims, objections, responses, etc).

Again, PACER is addictive and expensive. Don't even ask me how much I owe.

[Keebler]

My bad, I haven't been on PACER in a while, I remember that I was only able to access cases in my district, but oh well.

In your defense, I think your memory is correct. There's different websites you log on to for different districts. They all look and act the same but they're actually different sites. You may have had a link to your district in your favorites and never had a reason to look beyond that one site.

One side effect is the records for the $0.08 per page fee are all maintained seperately. Not until the end of the quarter are the fees consolidated and billed. If you want to know how much you've spent before the end of the quarter you need to log in to each site you've visited and add up all the charges manually.

[HHM]

My bad, I haven't been on PACER in a while, I remember that I was only able to access cases in my district, but oh well.

[Flamingo]

Anyone with a credit card can sign up on PACER. Kinda gives you the willies that all your information is out there if someone wants to go find it and check up on you or view relatives/friends bankruptcies. You would think with all the privacy laws now in place that all that information would be restricted because it is online and makes it much easier for anyone instead of going to the courthouse where the case is located and looking up the case. Just as recently as 2002, the year we filed, you could view through our District's BK website all BK cases in our state which still at that time listed all social security numbers. I freaked when I saw that - we were not yet listed and I contacted our attorney when I saw that and was advised that changes were in the works to have SS numbers and/or that entire site removed. It was gone by 2003.