Monday, August 24, 2009
Getting the the Valley was the hardest part
Today was the BIG day. I meet with my new bankruptcy attorney for the first time. You know what it's like going on a blind date? You have no idea what you're getting yourself into and, for neurotic people like me, you assume the worse. Plus, I was raised with a healthy dose of skepticism from birth, so I imagined a shady office building with a fat old guy wearing a bad toup out to take a scarred little boy who's at his last resort and bleed him dry of whatever money is left.
Imagine my surprise when I arrived to a professional office building with multiple tenants, a well appointed office with a receptionist, and a seasoned professional lawyer who took the time to explain the procedures and acted as though the whole thing would be a cake-walk and at the end, all my troubles would be gone.
Halelua, Praise Jesus.
I also want to point out an important lesson here. Never listen to your friends. Everyone I spoke with told me horror stories about going through bankruptcy and, with tougher new laws enacted under Bush, they weren't just handing out bankruptcies any more. That's quite not true. So what did we learn? Ask the experts - not your friends.
So I have a full week ahead of me getting things ready because my new lawyer friend will have my paperwork ready to file by the end of the week. Talk about fast! I've got to take a pre-bankruptcy course online, get my '08 taxes from my accountant and forward to the lawyer, and find $2,000 lying around to pay all the legal and filing fees. Then we'll set a court date, I'll appear and talk to a dude or dudette for less-than 2 minutes, and they will process my discharge papers. Whala!
And, this guy's office is like almost all digital. He said everything we'll need to do between us before the court appearance will be done over email. I'm telling you, the hardest part about this was to, first, decide that this was the course of action I HAD to take, and two driving to the Valley to meet my new lawyer friend (I forgot the 405 sucks).
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Bankruptcy
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1 comments:
It has been months since my decision to file for Ch7 and things, for the most part, are going well. Everything except for the mortgage. It's killing me and I'm currently in foreclosure. Obviously I'm trying to fix that situation but it's taking a lot of effort and distracting me from more important things.
There has been a lot of information sent my way and I can't confirm it all. But one little tidbit was that I should have filed for Ch. 13 not Ch. 7. Under a chapter 13, I could have, apparently, eliminated my second mortgage all together and restructured the late payments on my first mortgage at no penalty.
The more you know.... (and shooting star)
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