chapter 7 help

[mckeever25]

hello all, i happened to stumble onto this forum. anyway, me and my husband are thinking of filing chpater 7 bankruptcy. my husband is in the military, and currently in Iraq, he will be home within a month or 2, and we were hoping to have the paperwork started for the chapter 7 by then. but i'm not sure how to start it all, and whether it would be easier to do it all ourselves, or hire a lawyer. we're in Killeen, TX, and i have found a few lawyers around this area, but they all want to charge us over $1000, and to be honest, if we had that kind of money, we wouldn't need to file chapter 7.
i have all the forms needed downloaded onto my computer, but i have no idea what to do. also, we want to keep our only house and car, which, by texas law, we're aloud to do. we have no liens on any property we own, and just about everything we do own was paid for by cash, like furniture, clothing, ect. so how would that work? because i read, that in a chapter 7, the court or trustee, has to have some type of payment to the creditors in order to "cancel" the debt, and they would distribute your "assets" or property you have in your house. if someone could help me, i'd really appreciate it. i'm a little nervous about filing, but i know, that when my husband comes home, his pay will be reduced drastically, and we're already in over our heads, with credit cards and loans.
thankyou for all your help.
Tracey

[mmcconn2]

each state has different exemptions and there are websites out there that have these exemption $ amonts posted. you will need to find out what Texas allows, look at category two on the home page of this site they have a section called exemptions just scroll down and find your state, it has some good advise there. You need to figure out your debt to income ratio to see what BK you will qualify for. Ch7 they usually discharge all of your debt with no repayment to creditor or trustee, ch13 is where payments are usually made. Good luck!

[mckeever25]

thankyou for your help, most of it, like the differences in chapters, i have read about. i've been thinking about buying some books on the subject, and seeing what they have to say, but we're still deciding whether to do the bankruptcy ourselves, or hire a lawyer.
take care
Tracey

[mmcconn2]

I personally used an attorney and it cost me $900 and that included the filing fee, but I had some items that I wanted to make sure I could keep. This is my peronal opservation: when I went to my trustee meeting, I was the very last one called so I sat through about 20 cases and the ones that did not have an attorney with them the trustee really looked hard at their file and asked alot of questions, just my observation, take it for what its worth.

[mckeever25]

thanks mmcconn2, i was wondering how bad it would be if we did represent ourselves. i'm not sure whether it's the right way to go. but we'll see i guess, thanks again
Tracey