Community property state, filing alone??

[Filedat22]

My case has been discharged and closed. I still come back to this forum because it has been so helpful to me. I was reading another post here and it has got me to thinking. I lived in Indiana until I was 22. All of my debts were incurred in Indiana, just about all of them in my name. I had to move to California due to my husband being in the military. I filed BK 7 in California because after my husband joined we couldn't keep up with our bills. I had been in CA for over 6 months, so I filed under California law, a community property state. Most of the debts I had discharged I incurred during our marriage.

After doing some reading I am really worried that me filing bankruptcy alone just royally screwed my husband.

Is is true that since I filed in a community property state, the creditors can still come after him for my debts that were in my name, since he didn't file.

Please, say it ain't so....

[helpless]

Where is your legal residence? I wonder if CA state laws apply if your military and your home state of residence is elsewhere. I know that the whole time we were in the military of legal residence was florida, something you should check into.

[Filedat22]

Our legal residence is Indiana..Does is matter though since we filed under the California law? We had to use Indiana exemptions since we had been there less than 2 years.

[Filedat22]

I am finding some conflicting information, so I am really confused

The question here is, what state are you in ???

If you're in a community property state, then, as long as you're married, they can NEVER go after your wife, the discharge protects her as much as you in a CP state.

If you're in a non-CP state, and your wife is joint on the accounts that are discharged, they could go after her at any time since she is equally liable for the debts.

Since California IS a community property state, any debt that was created while you were married belongs to both of you regardless of whether anything was signed or not.

If you file alone in CA, then your creditors will simply turn to your wife for payment of any debts that were accrued during your marriage.

Anybody know which statement is correct??

[DivorceRuinedMe]

I always thought that what LRPRN says is how it goes too.

[southernbelle]

LRPRN is right. Even if you have a divorce decree that says different, they will still go after the other spouse for payment for debts created during the marriage. I live in a comm. prop. state too and trust me, if discharged, creditors WILL go after my ex for money owed to them for joint debts.

[lrprn]

Our legal residence is Indiana..Does is matter though since we filed under the California law? We had to use Indiana exemptions since we had been there less than 2 years.

The key here for you is that your residence in California was due to military duty. It's not the same as moving there voluntarily and claiming the state is your official residence.

There's a 2003 bankruptcy court case http://www.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/03/05/026073P.pdf. where the issue is whether residence in a community property state while in the military gives the divorcing spouse rights to the husband's property. The court's decision was that no, it doesn't, because the husband had maintained his state of residence in Illinois throughout his military career.

If you and your husband have always kept your state of residence as Indiana (which is not a community property state), then there's precedence in bankruptcy case law that your military husband cannot be held responsible for your discharged debts even though you were living in California at the time.

Since we aren't lawyers, the very best thing to do is to check with a knowledgeable bankruptcy lawyer in CA to ensure this interpretation is correct in your situation.