Transcript: Hello, this is Jeff Kelly and tonight I’m going to talk to you about chapter 7. What is it? And how in the world can it help you? Many people like to refer to chapter 7 as the Fresh Start provision of the bankruptcy code, because it basically allows you to wipe out all of your debt and get a fresh start. And a chapter 7, what we do is we want to show the court that you were unable, based on your budget to pay the debt that currently hangs over you. Approximately 90 days after we file your chapter 7, you’re going to be granted a discharge, which means that you’re no longer liable for that debt. Usually, one of the first questions I get is how much is this going to cost and the total charge for filing a chapter 13 in my office right now is 1400 dollars. This cost includes your filing fee, the attorney’s fees, but in both your classes that are required by the bankruptcy code. Well, chapter 7 may be simple in theory, there’s a lot of different factors to consider. For example, not every kind of debt can be discharged. And chapter 7 debts that arise from drunk driving, or you know, some type of intentional action, it’s not gonna get discharged student loans, child support, post petition homeowners associations, fees post petition ...
Transcript: Hello, this is Jeff Kelly. And in this podcast I would like to talk about how getting a cheap divorce can set you up for a possible bankruptcy disaster. Okay, the first way that I often see it and it’s usually in almost every case, the wife that’s left with the children is so desperate to get rid of nasty, horrible husband, that she will agree to anything without a lawyer. She signs the papers and literally gives everything to him. I cannot believe how often I see this situation. Go get an attorney. There are some attorneys who will defend mothers with children and they’ll collect all the attorneys fees from the the ex husband so it’s really tragic sometimes when I you know, I see Women with kids come in and there’s just not enough money to make the mortgage payment not enough money to cover electricity bills. In those situations, you know, honestly, bankruptcy doesn’t help if we’re in a house that you need to stay in and the future mortgage payments are too high. Maybe man, I hate it. And in most cases, it’s almost impossible to go back and undo a bad divorce. It’s much better to get an attorney from the beginning and avoid those rough situations. Another thing that I see that’s often very common is people will, you know, do the no fault divorce, no attorney and one spouse will sign their interest in the house over to the other spouse, and they’ll do it in ...
Transcript: Hello, this is Jeff Kelly bankruptcy attorney. And today I’m going to talk about can you marry someone who is about to file bankruptcy? And the answer is absolutely not. It’s not legal. Just kidding, of course. Just kidding. Just kidding. Relax. I know marriage can be a super scary proposition. You’ve got in-laws on the other side. You’ve got new potentially new brother in law’s and sister-in-laws. And now you’ve got more pressure on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and on and on and on. And then what happens if you also find out oh my gosh, the love of my life is loaded down with tonnes of debt. What should we do? Well, I think the worst thing you can do is to try to talk them out of filing bankruptcy. I think filing for bankruptcy might be the the best thing you can do to help get your marriage off to a nice fresh start, get rid of that stuff if you can. If you wait until after the wedding takes place, then the income of both spouses will count on the bankruptcy means test. So in other words, if you are a high-income earner, you could end up disqualifying your future spouse from being eligible to file bankruptcy if they need to, if you wait until after the wedding. However, if a person has high income, and they need to file bankruptcy, and the person they’re going to marry has no income in that particular case, it might make sense to wait until after ...
