Bankruptcy has a stigma attached to it which keeps many people away from filing when they should. The stigma of admitting failure through bankruptcy should never stop anyone from taking advantage of a legal means to eliminate your debt for good. Sometimes debt outstrips ones ability to pay it off in a timely manner that starts a domino effect of piling on debt even higher. It’s made worse when you can’t find the money to pay it off because you or a spouse has lost a job, and there’s no employment to be found. It’s at this point that you need to contact a Bankruptcy Lawyer Dearborn Heights for help.
The act of filing is not necessarily a straightforward proposition. To begin with, you have two types of consumer bankruptcies available to you, Chapters 7 and 13. Both are distinctly different from each other even though the outcome is the same. The one aspect they do both share is the fact that you have to make an attempt to repay your creditors in one form or another. Your Bankruptcy Lawyer Dearborn Heights helps you determine which chapter you eventually file in.
Chapter 7 focuses on liquidating assets to repay creditors. If you have anything of value that doesn’t have negative equity, you are technically required to sell it in order to satisfy creditors. This does not always happen as it is up to the discretion of the bankruptcy trustee to decide whether an item should be sold or not. Sometimes it’s not worth it to try to get retail value for your item, so the trustee lets you keep it. Other times, the trustee decides that it should be sold in order to gain some money. There is no knowing what is going to happen.
Chapter 13 creates a repayment plan for those who have money left over at the end of each month. You send in an agreed-upon payment to the trustee who then disburses it to creditors. The bankruptcy is open from 36 to 60 months, and any remaining balance at the end is discharged. In Chapter 13, you get to keep your assets because you are paying down your debt instead.
Talk with your lawyer about which version of bankruptcy is appropriate for your situation.
