Can't claim bankruptcy

[DYLAN150]

What do you recommend when a person can't file bankruptcy. It's a long story so I won't go into it.
I owe B of A about 28k on two credit cards and chase about 25k on three credit cards. I am current on all of them, however,
I am just barely making it and don't know how much longer I can. What about those debt relief companies?
From what I read most say it's a waste of time and money. Plus my interest on these cards run about 7% so I don't know if one
of those companies could help me. I have about 60 K equity in my home and thought about selling it to pay off the cards. Only, no homes in my neighborhood are selling right now and I have talked with several banks about a HELOC which is out of the question with my high debt. Do you think If I called the C.C. companies they would work with me or do I have to be behind in payments?

[HHM]

If the reason you cannot file BK is a "long story", then you are probably overestimating some risk to doing so. The ONLY reason a person "cannot" file a BK is if they have a previous BK in the last 4-8 years.

Granted, there may be financial reasons for not filing a BK, meaning BK is not the optimal solution to the problem. (i.e. significant non-exempt assets, most of your debt is secured debt, etc).

[SVBroke]

When we had starting having income problems, my husband and myself called a few of our CC companies to see if they would work with us. The basic answer was they would reduce our % rate if we had no lates in the next six months. Then we received a letter that due to the new financial information we had provided, they were closing our accounts to new charges and they reduced the available credit to just above the total balance. Therefore, no they would not work with us and after missing one payment, adding a late charge, they were now adding additional charges for us being over the limit.

[jktrading]

When we had starting having income problems, my husband and myself called a few of our CC companies to see if they would work with us. The basic answer was they would reduce our % rate if we had no lates in the next six months. Then we received a letter that due to the new financial information we had provided, they were closing our accounts to new charges and they reduced the available credit to just above the total balance. Therefore, no they would not work with us and after missing one payment, adding a late charge, they were now adding additional charges for us being over the limit.

And so starts the downward spiral. I remember all that.

When I had Amex, almost every other month, they would reduce the credit limit to within a few hundred dollars of the balance. Once I called MBNA for a customer service issue, and the rep I spoke with closed the account right there because of our income/debt ratio.

This type of thing happens when CC companies notice what you may or may not be in denial about.

We tried a consumer credit counseling service, and they were somewhat successful in reducing interest rates. However, they made a big mess out of our credit reports that looked basically as bad as a bankruptcy. There were notes all over about using a credit counseling service, and some even reported lates because we didn't make the minimum payments they wanted.

[SobStory]

I have been successful in getting some CC cos. to reduce interest to 0% & to make principal payments over 60 mos. You have to ask and you have to be late before they will work with you. Each CC co has a name for this like "Debt Mgmt". etc. and yes, they close yr acct. The point is, you don't have to work with consumer credit counseling - you can do this yrself.
Unfortunately, I couldn't even keep up with that...