how can I

[munchkn813]

help calm my husbands fears about filing for bk?
I keep telling him to come on here and read (and he has a couple times, but I don't think he's done enough reading or asking questions). He did check out a couple books on bk at the library and got into reading one of them a bit more today and is going even more crazy about it all. That one was a general bk book. The other one that I had been reading is just for ch. 7 so I handed it over to him.
He is freaking out about someone coming into our house and taking pictures of everything and taking our big screen tv (a nice one, but about 4 years old now - flat screen, but not plasma), my laptop (nicer Dell, 2 years old now) we also have 2 older ones that won't even turn on now, our girl's toys, the Wii, kitchen appliances, his comic books... also there is mention of like 85% of income.

I have read on here about people saying someone has come and taken pictures of things, but from my understanding it seems to be more of a threat and it's not worth the time and money to actually send someone out to check things out and haul it away...am I correct here or should I be more worried about us losing our things?

[aces67]

Have you seen a lawyer yet? If not schedule a consult and take your dh with you. Let him ask any questions he needs to so that he can be more comfortable.

Some people do have their personal items looked at but that is rare.

[munchkn813]

I met with our laywer a few weeks ago, but he was unable to come due to work. We are in the process now of trying to get caught up on bills (house, car, utilities) and get used to actually paying for groceries and gas on our own and not swiping the cc and save up the money for the lawyer. The waiting game has him stressing out big time...I was kinda wanting to wait until after we get our tax return so we could use that money for some things we need, but it may almost be worth losing it to just get this over with and calm him down :p If we could get the money together fast enough...

[hamburgervol]

BK was the most liberating thing I have ever done. I was able to wipe out an enormous amount of unsecured debt that I would have never been able to pay back.


Trust me, the trustee will not want your TV or any of your other stuff. We have all that stuff too...it's all still here.

Ask yourself what you could sell all that stuff for on craiglist, ebay, or garage sale. That's what it's worth.

[jps1013]

Our lawyer had someone come out and evaluate our personal possessions and had someone else appraise our cars. Needed to know values for the exemptions. We hired the people (i.e. we paid) and the reports were given to the lawyer who then gave them to the Trustees. We have decided to surrender some of these things but that was our choice in order to offset some of the assets that we wanted to keep. We are actually coming out a head doing it this way. We could never have gotten the same price by selling the items ourselves.

[backtoschool]

Your possessions are worth a lot less to the trustee than they are to you. And there are exemptions for all of your household goods anyway. The trustee does not want to have to sell your used home furnishings.

That being said, bankruptcy is an emotional process, at least it was for me. I had to wait six months to file after I made my decision because I had moved to Michigan from New York, and had to establish residency. I also had to wait and let my income get low enough within the six month lookback so that I would qualify for a chapter 7. Those six months of waiting were more stressful to me than the actual process of bankruptcy once I filed. In those six months, I kept imagining the worst. It all worked out great for me, and all of my worrying was pointless.

If you can hold out and get your tax return, that money will help you stock up on things that you need as you transition to a cash only budget. Don't let fear make you throw that money away. That money is yours, and you need it now.