What do I need to do?

[believeit]

I'm thinking that we need to file chapter 7. We have close to 100k between credit card debt and medical bills. I stopped working after having our 2nd child 2 years ago (we would have paid more for child care than what I would be making). My husband makes enough to pay all the bills except for the cc debt and the medical bills. Because of these what has been happening is that we've been doing the balance transfers and using the balance transfer checks to pay the bills every month. By doing this we just raised the cc debt even higher. To this point we have about 2 months left that we will be able to keep our heads above water doing this. After that our cc's will all be maxed out and we have no where else to get money from. To this day I've never been late on making any payments. It kills me that we are at this point, but I don't see any other way out.

So I guess I need help on where to start. What do I do? How long does the whole process take? We want to keep our house, and can keep paying the mortgage payments after. We can do that right? We also have two car payments, and would be able to keep paying those as well. Will they let us do that?

Also, we have a couple of credit cards, ex Best Buy that we have 0% interest on and only have a few hundred dollars left. Can we just choose to keep paying that one? I'm assuming Best Buy will close the account anyway because of the BK. Is it worth it to even pay it? Will we ever get a credit card through anyone again that we have one through now?

Ugh. This just makes me feel ill. But I've been told I'll feel like a weight is lifted after we do this too. It just sucks.

Help please!

[ready2puke]

First off you'll have to wait between 3-6 months or longer to file due to the Bal Transfers. What are you going to do without them? You've been using them to pay the bills? Are those cc bills? Do you have enough to live on without the cc debt? The faster you stop paying the cc's and stop using the transfers the better off you'll be. One problem is if you stop and not pay them anything towards those Bal Tran. they might object to fraud or abuse. I had to wait 6 month after I stopped paying and it'll be 8 months since my last transfer. I hope thats enough..Good luck and keep reading..

[ready2puke]

oh yea forget about keeping any cc's open during and after BK..not going to happen. The more you read the more you'll learn..Its very overwhelming and we all feel it

[shabam]

This may be a good time for you to think about finding a bk laywer.

There is usually a unofficial waiting period between BT / cash advances and filing. Otherwise the case could be assumed fraudulent and thrown out. Forget about keeping a CC after bk.

Which state do you reside in?
When did you last perform a BT?
Roughly how large was the amount?

I would stop using the cc and performing any BT immediately. If you cannot pay the minimum then leave it. Just focus on paying the necessities. A lot of research and sound legal advice is the key here. This site has a ton of info.

Just relax, take a deep breath and realize that a lot of people are in a similar situation.

[justbroke]

There is usually a unofficial waiting period between BT / cash advances and filing. Otherwise the case could be assumed fraudulent and thrown out.

Not to confuse the original poster, believeit, but those specific creditors may file an objection to dischargeability for those specific lines of credit. The entire case won't be thrown out, just because of the balance transfer and cash advances. This wouldn't affect the entire case, unless the Trustee could prove some sort of bad faith... like multiple filings, obvious fraud, etc.

Generally, you need to wait about 70 days since any balance transfers or cash advances have been done. This is an aggregate of $825or more. You need to wait 90 days if you spent more than $500-600 in aggregate on any single credit account.

However, this doesn't immediately make it non-dischargeable. It just yields a presumption of non-dischargeability. Fancy speak for... the creditor has to initiate a complaint with the court and challenge it.

I agree on everything else. You should be using this time to plan your bankruptcy and to get things in order... like stop using credit cards! You should make a few payments (minimum) as well on those cards that you did a BT on. You need to show that you tried to pay it back.