Bankruptcy

Online data entry is now available!!

We now offer secure online data entry for bankruptcy information, from the privacy of your own home. This is offered through Rapid Import, it's free, and it facilitates providing to us much of the information we need to help you with bankruptcy. In fact, we offer a $100 discount for entering your information online. You may enter this before or after retaining us. If you would prefer, we can email or mail you a form to fill out to email or bring to us.

Chapter 7

A Chapter 7 will discharge most debts, including credit cards, medical bills, and loans. Child support, spousal maintenance, most taxes, student loans, and some divorce property settlements (or agreements to indemnify the other spouse) are not dischargeable. In order to qualify for Chapter 7, you need to either show that you are below the median income for a family of your size, or otherwise pass a somewhat complicated "means test". If you are over the median income, the means test, in a nutshell, compares your income to standardized expenses (see links below) to see if you can pay $10,000 ($166.67 per month) or 25% to your unsecured creditors in a chapter 13.

Other requirements of the 2005 Bankruptcy Act is that you need to go at least do a consultation with a credit counseling program prior to filing, and go through a budgeting program prior to getting your discharge. We generally recommend meeting with an attorney before going through a credit counseling program due to certain timelines the Act requires. We have an arrangement with one of the lowest-charging internet-based credit counseling agencies where you can do it right at home from your own computer, and the fees can be rolled right into your fee with us.

Under state and federal exemption laws, you can almost always keep your house, your car, household furnishings, clothing, and sometimes up to $20,000 ($10,000 per person) of other miscellaneous assets, including cash, bank accounts, and tax refunds. You will almost always need to keep making the payments on your house or car. I will need to talk to you in more detail to determine whether it will be more beneficial to you to utilize state or federal exemption laws; this, in turn, will affect which assets you can keep. Before your case is filed, you will know exactly whether we think there is any realistic chance that you might have to turn over any assets.

Chapter 13

People usually file Chapter 13 when they have mortgage arrears, taxes, back child support, a prior case filed within the last eight years, or excess income which does not allow them to file for Chapter 7. In a Chapter 13, you make monthly payments to a trustee.

We help people consider their financial options, and when feasible, we help people file for relief under chapter 7 and chapter 13 of the Bankruptcy Code.

Bankruptcy Links

Federal Law requires us to inform you that this office is a Debt Relief Agency

Disclaimer:

This Web site has been prepared for general information purposes only. The information on this Web site is not legal advice. Legal advice is dependent upon the specific circumstances of each situation. Also, the law may vary from state to state, so that some information in this Web site may not be correct for your jurisdiction. Finally, the information contained in this Web site is not guaranteed to be up to date.

E-mails to Timothy Casey Theisen, P.A. does not constitute a client-attorney relationship. Timothy Casey Theisen, P.A. is not responsible for information provided by linked sites.