Need advice ..... spouse filing seperately...community property state

[tjs1970]

I bought the house in Sept. 2006. I had built my credit back from the ground up after I started to make some good money in 04,05,06. Then the housing market happened about a year after we bought it, but we were not worried since we both had stable high paying jobs and when that ended, we lived off of savings that I had socked away. Well........eventually that went bye bye too and we are pretty much broke with the debts listed above.

What happens to any money we have in checking? We do not have much now, but if we wait too long to file, since we arent paying the CC or mortgage now, we will probably have 5 or 6k in there in a few months. I dont want to lose that, so how should we wisely disperse it out?

We are going to need some financial cushion once they make us move from our house into a rental and we are most likely going to have to pay double or triple deposit on a new place when we move.

[Chowder]

The usual advice is to stock up on consumables, repair cars.
If you're giving up the house anyway, you might want to go ahead and rent something else that you'd move into at the right time.

[backtoschool]

Your security deposit for a new apartment is going to eat up a decent sized chunk of that cash. I would start looking for an apartment or house to rent even while you are living in the forclosed house. When you find a place you like, put a deposit down, and negotiate the move in date for a bit later.

You will be able to exempt some of the cash in your exemptions.

I would save some of the cash to buy a used car in case the trustee does not let you reaffirm both car payments.

[tjs1970]

the problem is........we think we won't be foreclosed on until march or april...........well if we wait to file the BK til then, we will have saved up a substantial amount of money......and i dont want that to be taken away........if we file now, i guess that is fine....but will our house be affected at all? we do NOT want to move out and get a rental until we have to and since the spring is a long ways away, no rentals are going to know if they have availability that far in advance.......

also, if we file now, will they examine my personal bank account that she is not on the account? if so, i might need to wait as last month i had some large withdrawls that I cannot account where the money went (over 10k) and it is gone now so i dont want to raise any red flags there..........currently we have about 1500 in my sole account and about 1500 in our joint account.......