Did your lawyer tell you not to pay ccs?

[sophia]

We hired our attorney first week of February, 3 days before February bills started to become due. His advice was to not pay any CC companies anything.

It was our first time ever not paying our CC's. We also did not file BK until 90 days from the last use of all cards and our last payments which was the last day of April. I was getting upset about the lawyer taking so long but I see now why he does this.

I wish I'd stopped paying them (CC's) sooner and filed later knowing what I know now.

We got a hefty tax return after we hired him that we were not able to use in the manner that would have benefited us the most. Like paying off our 401k loan and waiting several months and then filing. I could kick myself for not finding this board sooner. Oh well....

[Jumper]

As a long-time renter in CA, it *could* hurt your chances of finding
some homes to rent. However, if you find and rent a new place
inside the 30-day window, I would think you would be fine.
Beyond 60-days, and it might very well show up on your credit
reference. One or two of those you might be able to explain away,
and as a previous poster mentioned, it is a buyers/renters market,
as many people are desperate to rent some properties out before
they lose them.

On a slightly different tangent,...I also quit paying CCs when my
attorney said so,..it is indeed throwing money away. However,
there has been a great increase I've read in people filing w/o
having any 30-day lates. There is one, perhaps slight, advantage
in stay current. When you stop paying CCs, at a certain point,
your "case" is forwarding to the Collections Dept of the creditor,
and that's where those proverbial non-ending phone calls start,
not to mention (historically speaking) telephone harrassment.

By continuing to pay your bills and stay current, when you do file,
your "case" will bypass the collections dept, and go directly to their
legal dept, who won't engage in endless telephone calls.

Finally, I might also recommend going online now (or by telephone)
and "sign up" with rental brokers and get approved now, before you
go either way. Different than many places I experienced in the
Midwest, California has a lot of real estate brokers, who specialize
in home rentals. Good Luck.

I just finished reading a book 'surviving bankruptcy' and they mentioned that once you know you are planing bk you should stop paying creditors as it is like throwing money away.

Did you all follow this rule?

We need to move pre-filing time (our lease is up Dec.; want to move in Nov and file end of Nov).

If we stopped paying cc's we'd have all those 30-60 day lates. I wish we could move now but we are under lease until then. Will this hurt our chances of renting?