To file or not to file?

[BKFreedom]

Thank you for the clarification. It is helpful.

[BKchapter13]

Filing a wage earners bankruptcy is very hard but full of lessons, there are many things I could have done differently and that is the reason chapter 13 is here. teaches us to live within our means and save our money instead of throw out to the sharks. Dont feel bad about filing, its a fresh start.. we owed 65 grand and paid half of that to date, one year from now we hoping to done with it.. its hard but gosh I can only imagine the day it ends. Without debts, with tools to be independant of the credit card companies. yeahhh... blessings and good luck

[minan]

Before we filed, we got about 35-40 calls a day. Keep in mind at this point, we were only 30-days late on our credit cards, however due to the new credit laws from 2009/2010, the first time we were 30-days late, our interest rates were increased to the max, i.e, one went from 10% to 29.99%, etc..it was this that made us realize were never going to get out of debt. Based on what we owed, we would have been paying into our 70s. The 13 offered us the chance to get rid of all debt before we turn 50 while paying off our tax debt in full (which was the monkey on our back). It has been 7 months of living without a credit card (it's not as bad as we thought). We have a budget.it's not always fun...but we try to remember what this will mean to us in year 5 when we are done.

[ilovemyfam]

Help

We are in a real bad position. I have sought counsel from three different attornies and they all say that I am in a difficult situation.

It has been almost three since I had to make a decision to stop paying on our unsecured credit cards which total quite alot. I have over the 300000 in unsecured debt, more than 1,1 million in secured debt. We have no savings, and no equity in any of the 5 properties that we own. We are getting sued in court for some of the unsecured debt and it is becoming very stressful. and on top of that we have been audited by the irS and they took away our deductions for my husband being the person to manage our properties because he didn't keep a log, so now we have irs debt. I cannot file chapter seven because we are trying to keep our properties that i am trying to catch up on two of them with payment arrangements, and chapter 13, we exceed the secured debt limits, and unsecured debt limits.. So what do we do. i have a job that pays me good money, my husband just manages the properties. Can we file two seperate chapter 13's to get the benefits limits for each of us? Or is there a way to eliminate all that unsecured debt and pay on the secured debt and keep our properties.... HELP,,, than I do not have the money for the attorney...I am so stressed out,

[GoodyYearCap]

This sounds awful "ilovemyfam." I'm sorry to hear you're in such a horrible situation. I have absolutely no legal training, but from a book I read... I'm wondering why you'd want to hang on to anything material that is causing you so much trouble. If it were me, and obviously I don't know what properties to which you're referring, or what they mean to you emotionally... but I would want to let everything go, let them take it away, and start fresh... with kids/husband/family/health. That's just me. No advice on the 'above 300,000' in unsecured debt thing.

[ValleYum]

ilovemyfam:

Has no one suggested an individual Chapter 11 bankruptcy to you? It is expensive but if you get to restructure your debts and can keep your properties - it would be worth it.

It is too bad that the current limits for Chapter 13 are $360,475 of unsecured debt and $1,081,400 of secured debt and won't go up again until 2013.

[wobbly]

Stupid things we did to delay the inevitable.

Cashed out a 401K paid 36% penalty....needed the money to keep going.
Refinanced in 2006 80/20 loan, to pay off other debts.
Borrowed for student loans and took the refunds and paid other bills. Eh, those don't go away.

So looking back, if we bit the bullet in 2005 or so, we'd be done now and have rebuilt some hopefully, have our 401K, have a better mortgage, have less student loan debt.

Ah, if we only knew then what we know now!

Cheers,

Wobbly