Please answer my chapter 7 questions( filing within a week) I think...

[Manolo]

OK, I am not even sure where to start. I met with an attorney 2 weeks ago and he told me he wishes all of his people were as informed as me and that my case was easily his easiest all week. I don't trust attorneys...period and what I really don't like about this process is I have to pay the entire amount $1,600 for them to complete this. Here are my fears.

1. Once he has my money and keeps telling me this is easily a no asset chapter 7 ( I have a house I want to keep), what happens and what keeps them from saying "oops, can't keep the house, it is a asset case. Saying that after the 341.

2. I got a market analysis. I want to keep home. To me, the big red flag anyone worth their salt would see that makes my home a little different than others in a BK is that I put 29K down on home (20% down). Attorney tells me that is no big deal because of the market crash. I seriously doubt that because I think I have more than the 15K exemption in equity. I am going with an attorney that all they do is BK's. That's it. Nothing more.

Also, I do not have my taxes and insurance escrowed. Therefor, I have fell behind on my prop. taxes and homeowners that the lender went ahead and paid. That comes to around $2,400. The way the lender did it is to add $300 to my payment now until that is caught up.

Question: Does that entuire amount have to be caught up by discharge or how does that work since I can not pasy the trotal amount right now...Big stretch to even afford it after the n$300 raise in payment each month. Also, if I have to give the house away (worse case). Why would I file now? I might as well not pay my mortgage for 6 months until they forvlose so I can live some[place for free and then put everything in it. But by then, the CC"s would try to make their move.

OK, so I keep the house, but my big concerns are will the trustee really dig deep in my market analysis besides ask me how I came to that figure? Think they'd let it die after I say I got a market analysis. I mean, it is not a huge difference between what I want the value to be and if the trustee had an appraiser come out.

And also, another big concern is how the prop. tax thing works. If part of the amount is being added to my payment each month, think they are OK with that in a BK? I am not behind on the actual principal and interest (still need to make May's payment though)

Hopefully this is coming through right in this thread. Mind is racing. I meet with BK atty. again this coming wednesday.

I am filing on roughly 30K in unsecured debt.

Sadly, I only make 25K a year which puts me in chapter 7.

I also have not used any of my credit cards in 2 years and paid the balances down as far as I can when I was not even working.

Thanks

[AngelinaCatHub]

OK, you have overwhelmed me, but I shall try: If you do not trust your lawyer, get three other opinions, most are free. Next, do not pay him all up front. They tend to get very lazy then.

About the house and your 20% down means nothing as the real estate market is in the bucket. Stop making all payments on CC cards and to your house. That is the most important. Not knowing what state you are in, are you homesteaded?

I don't trust lawyers either, except I have two friends whom are rare as honest people. If you don't know the law enough to go pro se, keep or get a lawyer. This is too important to mess up.

C7 is simple but before I got educated, I did everything anyone could do wrong. I did survive, only by a good Trustee.

Prune your posts to smaller individual questions and you may get better results. 'Hub

[Manolo]

OK, but the attorney told me he can not even file my chapter 7 until I pay the $1,600. Is this correct?

I live in Indiana

Yes I am homesteaded and do not want to surrender my house. I owe about $2,700 though in escrow shortage

[nodough]

You must pay the full amount ahead of time for a chapter 7. Otherwise it would be a dischargeable debt. Chapter 13 lawyer fees can be included in your monthly payments.

[Manolo]

I am going to have the escrow shortgage added to my payment till caught up. Will not suffice for this Chapter 7 case?

Or will I have to pay the total shortgage in full before? ($2,700)

[kenshirley]

"Next, do not pay him all up front. They tend to get very lazy then."

Have you got that right or what!
We paid ours up front the first time we saw him in Oct of 2008 because we wanted to file then. We were still current on the debts but could not pay many any longer and unemployed. I cannot work with my disability (I have my retirement anyway) and my wife just lost her job due to medical problems.
We did not know about the last 6 months of income counting and with her job she lost the end of September it put us over the means.
So we waited to file a chapter 7. In the meantime, I had questions. Trying to get that attorney or his staff to respond to me by email or phone was nearly impossible! Now I don't know if it had been any different if I had not paid them but I suspect~~Yes they had my money already and all they had done was look over the first set of paperwork we filled out for him.
So I called the receptionist one day and informed her that if I did not have a response within one hour that I would consider our "contract" null and void and I would be in the office within the next hour to get my money back. And I told her I want the $1500 the same way I paid it and that was in cash.
That was the last time I had response problems with my attorney's office.