Articles Posted in Chapter 13 Bankruptcy

When looking at whether you qualify for bankruptcy as a chapter 7 or chapter 13 the size of your household makes a big difference. Chapter 7 allows you to not pay any money back to creditors whereas chapter 13 requires that you do a payment plan that last either 3 or 5 years depending on whether you are above or below the median income. In the central district of california which is the local bankruptcy court for Riverside, San Bernadino County and Los Angeles County, the trustees seem to use a heads on bed approach as opposed to traditional family or what your dependents that you claim on your tax return says. Sometimes there are children that live between to households which can benefit you if you can include them in your bankruptcy even though your spouse claims them on the previous year tax returns and things like that.

In Palm Springs, many of my clients are gay which allow me to find creative ways to qualify people for bankruptcy and determining whether to include a partner or not. Some people are domestic partners, married, or just living together which all have different and varying consequences and allow me to creatively think about how to get the best result. Because bankruptcy is federal most trustees only require federal tax returns which can be helpful to gay couple that are married and file joint returns in California but as single under federal taxes since the federal government does not recognize gay marriage. This can make a big difference in qualifying for chapter 7 since an individual income can be up to 48k a year but when you are a family of two its 62k. By treating to people as single it allows the household unit to make up to 96k which can be a huge benefit.

If you are thinking about bankruptcy and have debt problems and live in Riverside County, talk with a bankruptcy lawyer who deals with our local trustees and knows the in and outs of the bankruptcy court before walking down that path without counsel.

When you have assets that are above the amounts that the california exemptions in chapter 7 are able to protect, it puts property that you have in potential risk of being liquidated. Something that most people don’t understand though is that you have the option to buy it back from the trustee typically at a discounted rate before the trustee puts it on the market. That is what an equity buy back is. In general for most of my bankruptcy clients this is extremely rare because California has extremely generous exemptions which typically allow most debtors to protect all there assets. There are two exemption models that you can use which are known as the 703 or 704 exemptions. 704 exemptions are for people with a lot of equity in there house(not so many in riverside county). Typically for people who have no refinanced in the last 15 years and are older. Most married couples can protect 100k in equity in there home so if your house is worth 300k and you owe 200k your equity interest would be exempt. If you are 55 or older with a certain income you can get 125k in equity and 65 or older can be up to 175k in equity. Since most clients of mine do not have equity we use the 703 exemptions which give you $3500 for a car, 1400 for jewelry, 23,000 as a wildcard which you can use however you want. So if your car is worth 10k and you don’t have a secured creditor through financing then you would have to borrow 6500 from the wildcard which would still leave you with 17k to use how you wish. When you go over the wildcard then the trustee will ask if you want to buy back what he could liquidate to pay your creditors. For example I had a client who owned a 30k dollar car, had an IRA for 100k, jewelry of $1000 and 10k worth of household goods. In this situation the IRA/401k etc is protected 100%. The jewelry is protected up to 1400 so its protected 100%. The household goods are in general protected so no issue. The wildcard and the car exemption equal about 27k so the trustee could send me a letter if they are interested in 3000 dollars and let me know that we need to pay 3000 or else he will sell the car and pay my client 27k and have 3k to pay creditors. For that small of an amount the trustee typically wouldn’t do it as its to much of a pain to administer an estate that small and buy the time he paid auctioneer fees, fees to pick up and store the car etc there truly would be nothing to distribute to creditors. If its closer to 10k then the letter will come for sure. If someone did not want to lose that 10k then they could file a chapter 13 and they would have to pay at least 10k back to creditors over 5 years. If that is your only reason however to file a 13 my typical suggestion would be to do a 7 and pay the 10k over 1 year if they can afford it. These are the general issues in understanding what happens to debtors with more assets than typical and the option of the equity buy back. Call a riverside bankruptcy attorney if you have questions about how a liquidation analysis would unfold in your chapter 7 bankruptcy.

Many people are under the mistaken belief that you can only keep one car in bankruptcy. While the bankruptcy code in California only give you an exemption for one car at $3550 this does not mean that you can only keep one car. I have had clients with 8 cars that have filed chapter 7 and kept them all. Because california has a wildcard exemption for 23,500 its not a question of how many cars but how much value in your cars that you can exempt. Many people have financed cars with no equity in them as they owe the banks more than the cars are worth. Under that analysis you can have as many cars as you have financed as its of no value to the estate since its your equity position in the car that the trustee cares about and not the cars that are overly financed. The wildcard exemption can be pieced and parceled however you like so if you have a car worth 10k we would use the 3500 for the car exemption and the 6500 for a wildcard exemption which would still leave 17k on the wildcard. We could then exempt 2000 dollars that you have in the bank which would leave 15k on the wild card. You could have 5 cars worth 3k a piece and then that would use all the exemption amount. So you can see by my examples its not a matter of how many cars but what the values are and if we can protect everything with the wild card exemption as well as the car exemption. Call my office if you have further questions as to what you can keep in bankruptcy.

When doing google searches about Palm Springs Bankruptcy attorney’s I seem to find more and more attorneys who are paying to advertise via the web in Palm Springs regarding bankruptcy service but do not live or practice in Palm Springs. Many of these law firms use virtual offices and have a paralegal show up once a week to do the intake process. I don’t have any issues about taking cases out of town and actually do practice in all four federal districts doing chapter 7’s in all four but 13’s only in the Northern and central District, but I do recommend that if you are going to hire an attorney for something as intimate and potentially consequential as bankruptcy that you are dealing with an attorney and not a mass marketing mill that strives to take your money with little consequence to what happens with your case. Many attorney need paralegals to do the day to day work such as correspondence, drafting letters, filing cases, entering data etc. I have heard more and more from clients who have gotten their cases dismissed that there was a lack of communication between the paralegals and the attorney managing their cases which sometimes has gotten their case dismissed. I have had at least 3 cases in the last month from people in palm springs who have filed bankruptcy with attorneys who are an hour or more drive and have had communication break downs which lead to case dismissals and in one case a house which was sold at auction because an attorney didn’t file an response for a motion for relief from automatic stay. Make sure that whoever you decide to use in your bankruptcy that they have your best interest at hand. There is some money to be made in bankruptcy these days with as many cases as we are seeing, but my belief is that if you want to make this a lasting practice you have to take a very individual approach with each client which I strive to do, even as I get busier. Call my office at 760-459-2438 and you will speak with me directly. I live and work in Palm Springs and plan on staying in bankruptcy for the long haul and you will see that in my personal service and attentiveness that I take on your case. Although we will get out of this recession and tough economic times, there will always be failed businesses, divorce, medical issues and the standard things that cause people to file bankruptcy. The mills will fade and the sole practitioner who is serious about bankruptcy will rise to the top and that is how I am building my practice.

The general rule in bankruptcy is that the most recent tax return needs to be turned into the trustee one week before the 341 hearings. Failing to do so can get your case dismissed or if you are lucky the trustee will give you a few days to do it and continue your case. If you comply with the tax return requirement then they will remove the continued date off calender and everything moves forward to you getting a discharge. That is if you file your 2nd credit counseling class along with the B23 certificate where you swear that you took the class and put the certificate number etc. These are some of the things that pro se(clients that represent themselves) forget to do and end up getting their cases dismissed. Looking up the local rules on the bankruptcy court website can help but the more prudent aproach in my opinion is to hire someone to do it for you. As a riverside county bankruptcy attorney I do this every day and make sure that everything is done correctly. Today I was in court for 3 cases and one one of them my client gave me a declaration that they were not required to file tax returns for the previous two years because they made under the 9k IRS limit which allow you to not file. I have dealt with this before with clients just making social security income or low income enough to not file. What I have typically done is just file a declaration claiming them exempt from returns. Today the trustee told me that I was in his opinion still required to mail the most recently filed return which was for 2008. I will do that tomorrow and the case will move forward smoothly. Even a seasoned practitioner can be challenged and he might be right. I find it hard to believe that the trustee would be interested in the income my client made three years ago as its irrelevant to the current bankruptcy case but if that is what he wants then I’ll be faxing that to this office tomorrow. Typically I have my clients file tax returns before we file. I might go back to that.

The actual costs to file bankruptcy in Riverside County or anywhere for that matter is $299 for a chapter 7 and $274 for a chapter 13. There are also two classes that are now required by the bankruptcy code and some providers charge up to $50 dollars but I have found two that are reasonable and that you can do for $5 and $15 for the second class. I charge people $30 for an individual and 50 for a joint couple to pull their credit reports which then downloads all creditors into my software. Essentially then for me there are $350 dollars in fees that go out of my pocket to file a case on behalf of my clients. Most bankruptcy attorneys start the fees at $1500 for a chapter 7 and that is just for attorney fees so many are $1850 or more in order to file. I try to start around $1200 for a basic case but if its really simple and not a lot of assets to protect, financing on cars, saving a house from foreclosure etc then I’ve been known to charge $1000 dollars. A typical case for me is 12-15 hours of work and then I have my own cost of running a business so I’m about as reasonable as they come for a qualified bankruptcy attorney. I do all the work myself occasionally using virtual paralegals for data entry and gathering of documents when I get too busy, but I pride myself on having a personal relationship with my clients throughout the whole process. I see the type of work that the bankruptcy mills churn out and they charge as much as I do and there clients only meet there attorney for 30 minutes and then show up at the hearing. Bankruptcy work needs someone that you feel comfortable with and that answers the right questions and best protects you to help you move forward with your fresh start. I vary my prices on a sliding scale and understand what people are going through in this economy and what a personal decision this is so please call my office to find out what chapter to file or if bankruptcy is right for you.