Well, I've done a few phone consultations - thanks to what I've found here on this forum, I felt pretty comfortable knowing what to ask and what to look for. I was planning to go back to work by the beginning of April after my surgery/recovery, but it looks like I would be shooting myself in the foot and forcing a CH 13 if I start earning any money... looks like I'm on vacation until we get through this process.

I really liked the guy that we're going to hire, and he's getting me in right away so I have time to fill out all of their forms before my surgery on Jan 19th. I thought we should probably file May 1st at the earliest, once DH's overtime falls off, but he said we probably can file sooner (Mar 1st) and explain away the overtime... Interesting strategy, I thought, but he said he has done this successfully.

Tom has been handling BK's for 25 years, and he said he has had many successful Ch 7's for people over the median. He said once I've submitted all of their required paperwork, he'll be better able to advise us on when to file - he also said that if it looks better to wait, he has several strategies to delay lawsuits/judgments and that he will help with that! Nice.

After I got off the phone with him, I started looking through all my records one last time - I have a document prepared listing everything that I think may be a red flag. Well, I somehow completely forgot about a business checking account, and discovered that there are two large cash withdrawals (Apr 08, and Jun 08) that I can't explain!! Unbelievable even to me, but I can't figure out what I did with that money!! Ugh.

I'll be talking this over with Tom on Tuesday, but now I'm thinking we'll probably need to wait until Jul 1 to file so those transactions will be a year old. That would also give me 13 months from my last credit card activity... hopefully he'll tell me we can stall lawsuits that long!

I know the standard is 6 months bank statements, so that would be fine for filing March 1st, but if the Trustee asks to go back a year we'll be up a creek! Even if we wait out the full year, I suppose we could still be in trouble if we get audited (over median, high unsecured debt - 177k as of right now).

The other downside to waiting is that I would need to wait to get a job until after the 341 in August... or until after discharge in October? What a thought! hmmm, scrapbooking here I come! For a former workaholic, this is a very strange place to be.