Please, please help me with advice

[jstopnitzky]

Good morning everybody,

Well, here I am several months after my 341 meeting and no discharge yet.

The information below is taken from Pacer’s Website as of this morning. I just don’t get it….What is going on?

My attorney has vanished and I don’t know what to do.

Awaiting 341 Meeting 03/30/2009 198 days

Awaiting Discharge 05/14/2009 153 days Chapter 7

Trustee's Report of No Distribution

Please understand, that I understand, you guys can’t render a legal opinion on the issue. I am just asking for a suggestion.

Please help me. This process has been so difficult for me.

If you could take a brief moment and reply to my post I will be forever grateful.

Thank you for everything!

[ForumReader]

Whoa that is a long time to wait for your discharge papers in the mail nor see anything related to being discharged from pacer. I would suggest you contact the county clerk at the courthouse where you attended your 341 and find out why you have not been discharged yet. Shame on your lawyer for not being reachable. Let us know this turned out after you contact the courthouse.

[AngelinaCat]

This sounds a lot like our case. We filed 12/28/2007, had the 341 on 2/7/2008, and weren't finally discharged until 8/13/2008. The reason turned out to be that our file lacked a copy of our marriage license! We would not have known that if we hadn't done as ForumReader suggests and called the courthouse. Have your case number ready, and you will be put in touch with the case worker assigned to your case.

(For the record, we had the copy of the marriage license with us when we went to the 341. The trustee said he didn't need it. GRRRRRR! )

Good luck!

[jstopnitzky]

Thank you both for your recommendation. This is just maddening. I have yet to do so. Whoever lives in Southern California and reading this point and considering a BK attorney, DO NOT and I urge you, DO NOT hire the Curtis Law Group out of Irvine, California. Frankly, I sent an email to the trustee explaining my situation to him relative to my stupid-ass attorney. As a professional courtesy to all those in this forum, I will gladly forward that email to you so you can get a flavor for this jack-ass. My email address is [email protected]. Send me an email and I'll reply in the affirmative. This guy is a crook, taking advantage of people in the most vulnerable state they have found themselves in before.

This forum, BK Forum, has been a Godsend for me. In light of hiring a crook for an attorney who took $5,300 of the last $6,000 I had during our initial consultation, I had to educate myself thoroughly to this process and fired him shortly thereafter. I went about this process by my lonesome. After the 341 meeting I received threatening letters from Cab West, LLC, AMEX, Capital One, Chase, MBNA and my mortgage lenders (1st and 2nd). I settled with each and every one of them by myself.

If you can afford to, I strongly recommend to everyone to seek advice of counsel. Just don't hire this idiot. Please, spread the word to all you know. I feel I have a moral responsibility to share my story and collectively we need to work together to ensure nobody passing through this forum ever hires this man. I am one of the unique situations in that I took too many risks. My company has slowed down considerably, but the inability to earn a reasonable level of income has not been taken from me yet, thank the Lord for that!

I remain cautiously optimistic that I will recover from this experience sooner than later. But until a discharge is rendered, I am without the clarity and vision for the future I feel I need.

[backtoschool]

I don't understand why you settled with all of your creditors while you were filing for bankruptcy. Did they file AP's?

[dakota112]

Lawyers

Wow J. I feel bad for your experience. I too didn't learn my lesson early enough in the process and would give the lawyers down payments when I would see them only to realize when I got home during the drive or within days that I'll end up in some dark dungeon for the rest of my life if these scum bags represented me. It is by the grace of god I was able to find a real human being and a lawyer to represent me. They are out there but are few. The preofession has earned its reputation. These attorneys for the most part do not wake up in the morning with intentions that are pure of heart. Their reason for living is to make money, lots of it, ill gotten or otherwise. Most again, not all, care nothing for clients and I suspect their education process teaches them to be so as how else would they be able to sleep at night having taken a poor persons last dollar and not give some measure of comfort to people and their families in such dire need of help and reassurance. America is in big trouble. Again I fail to understand why there is no help from the govt to people in BR who need this representation given that the legalese is written so only they can understand it much like some secret code. Why no free legal care like medicare. Why not lawstamps like foodstamps for those in need. Why are their services required to be paid upfront? That alone tells you alot on how they work. Of course when they smell money, they will work on contingency, isn't that nice. I expressed my views to my attorney and she agreed 100% with me and is not proud of many of the people who comprise her profession and the BK process. Alot of people are going down this road and will follow us afterwards.Again as I digress, I pray that all out there don't get victimized by the legal profession. We walk in a mine field when you retain them, be careful. Don't be intimidated by them, and they are truly a dime a dozen except for the good ones which are a rare gem.

[aljohnson007]

You souldn'[t have paid one cent to settle but that is history. Did you complete and file your second credit counseling certificate? Look on your docket sheet in PACER and see what has transpired since you filed.

[jstopnitzky]

Dakota 112, I am impressed. Articulated perfectly, and so eloquently written. Hats off to you! And as a response to you, backtoschool, yes, all filed AP's against me. My attorney at the time asked me for $1,000/AP to represent me in the battle. He over-stated all that was involved since I experienced it myself, first-hand.

[dakota112]

What for me is so scary about this whole process as I wait out the next 80 some days before I file, is that it only gets worse. If you are not "connected" in this country to the powerful, elite, moneychangers, brokers, bankers etc, well you are going to struggle your remaining days on earth , even living in the USA which only gets harder and harder. There are so many lawyers out there. They don't plant or harvest food, they dont make, invent or produce. They only greedily TAKE, whatever they can get away with and more. They make laws that only they can read and understand and then you have to pay them obscene dollars per hour to decipher their code. BK continues to increase by the day in this country, I see no end to it. The process is difficult, it tortures families and I'm sure leads to more discord in families going through it with poor health, divorce and so on and Lord how the children must be sufferring in these families. It seems like the whole court system is just a factory and livelihood for us poor, misfortunate people in this predicament. Imagine while in CH 13 you can't evoke enough symapathy from A TT so as to be able to get braces for your child, dental care, pet care. What has come of us? And this can go on for 5 Years? How come wall street does not live by these same standards?