Will trustee take my eBay sale money after filing date?

[BKDefender]

It's a waste of your time - don't bother. It'll be gone as soon as he files your bankruptcy.

--William

[ineedalife]

I gotta ask. If your broke and unempoyed, why are you filing bk at this time?
Why not wait until you're finances are stable and you can support yourself post bk?

Sorry, I have no idea how to do the Quote thing.
Why wait until your finances are stable?
Am I locked in to my current income?
I am 6 months unemployed and hoping to file as so as my lawyer is ready ( I thought this week)so I can move on. I am afraid if I get a job that takes me over the med income I will be forced into 13. My wife makes 42k and I hope to make the same when I find a job. We are 70K in the red and with my unstable employment I sure don't want to go 13 then not be able to make the payments. I was in denial for years doing everything I could to pay my bills(interest), I am tired of the fight.

[BKDefender]

I'm more inclined to suggest bankruptcy when everything is gone, with least income or unemployed. You're already going to be defaulted on your credit cards, possibly high balance cards, and your credit is probably tanked already. Why wait until your credit recovers just to get shotdown with a bankruptcy after that. Get rid of your debts, any potential judgments, your credit cards, everything.

Start living off your wife's salary, get ONE credit card with either $500-$1000 limit, charge it up right up to but no more than 60% of the credit line ($300 or $600). Then pay only the minimum payment until it's reported on your credit report that or next month. Pay $125 on it, wait until that new balance is updated, charge $100 wait until it's reported, pay $125, etc. Show that you're using the card but that you don't go over 60% of the credit line. You'll find your credit recover 100-125 points in a year after BK, if not more.

--William

[jadams]

Why wait until your finances are stable?
Am I locked in to my current income?
I am 6 months unemployed and hoping to file as so as my lawyer is ready ( I thought this week)so I can move on.

I think the suggestion is more "don't file while things are still going downward".

I do agree with BKDefender above, though. Filing at a point where things a relatively stable but income and assets are gone/low makes it a lot easier.

The longer you wait to file, the longer it will be until you can recover and get your life back in order.

[PJP]

I'm more inclined to suggest bankruptcy when everything is gone, with least income or unemployed. You're already going to be defaulted on your credit cards, possibly high balance cards, and your credit is probably tanked already. Why wait until your credit recovers just to get shotdown with a bankruptcy after that. Get rid of your debts, any potential judgments, your credit cards, everything.

Start living off your wife's salary, get ONE credit card with either $500-$1000 limit, charge it up right up to but no more than 60% of the credit line ($300 or $600). Then pay only the minimum payment until it's reported on your credit report that or next month. Pay $125 on it, wait until that new balance is updated, charge $100 wait until it's reported, pay $125, etc. Show that you're using the card but that you don't go over 60% of the credit line. You'll find your credit recover 100-125 points in a year after BK, if not more.

--William

BKDefender, I'm learning quite a bit from your posts. I wonder if you are married and file a bankruptcy, what impacts it has on your spouse. Two issues that came to me were the credit of your spouse and also your spouse being a co-signer or surety of a bk estate. Will your spouse's bk filing affect your credit? Also can creditors still continue collection activities from your spouse as a co-signer even after your bk petition and the automatic stay?

[BKDefender]

If you're in a community property state then when one spouse files bankruptcy and discharges a community debt, the whole debt is discharged as to after acquired community property (i.e. wages). So if you had separate property prior to marriage they could still take it and sell it to satisfy a judgment against your spouse if it was a judgment on a community debt.

It looks to be that Oregon hasn't been a community property state for 50 years. (http://www.leg.state.or.us/ors/108.html)

I love ORS 108.050 that says a married woman is not responsible for the debts of her husband and ORS 108.030 that says a husband is not liable for the civil injuries committed by his wife :-) So a husband can run up a big debt and the wife's off the hook, and the wife can go bat-$#!+ crazy and the husband won't be liable for what she does. That's comforting.

If your spouse is a co-signer or surety for a debt and you could not have obtained that credit or liability without your spouse's income, then you might have a problem unless your spouse reaffirms that particular debt/liability (house/car/whatever). Will if affect your credit? If the creditor refuses to allow you to continue to be the sole person liable and defaults you because your spouse's income was needed to qualify for the debt and keep the debt. I just don't know how they'd handle that in Oregon though - Nevada is a community property state and we get that great overarching community property protection.

As for the last question - the collections part - when one party files bankruptcy, the creditor cannot go after the co-debtor during the pendency of the bankruptcy case - the stay protects the co-debtor as well, but the discharge might not. As far as whether, in Oregon, a creditor can go after your spouse after your BK discharge and case is dismissed, I don't know the answer to that.

--William

[Violet]

Monday? When I file a case I get the number immediately because we have to file every case electronically. Your attorney should be filing a suggestion of bankruptcy in that case anyway which alerts the court that you've filed and the court won't allow the case to move forward any more. It is like hitting 'pause'. If you get your discharge then the case gets dismissed with prejudice. If you don't get your discharge, then they press 'play' and start from where the left off.
--William

I spoke to my lawyer about five minutes before the conference was set to start today. He already had my file number. I'm not sure exactly when he filed, and have no idea if this information got to the court or affected how the conference went. Not that it matters.

[tigergem]

It looks to be that Oregon hasn't been a community property state for 50 years. (http://www.leg.state.or.us/ors/108.html)

I love ORS 108.050 that says a married woman is not responsible for the debts of her husband and ORS 108.030 that says a husband is not liable for the civil injuries committed by his wife :-) So a husband can run up a big debt and the wife's off the hook, and the wife can go bat-$#!+ crazy and the husband won't be liable for what she does. That's comforting.


--William

This is so beautiful.

[PJP]

I love ORS 108.050 that says a married woman is not responsible for the debts of her husband and ORS 108.030 that says a husband is not liable for the civil injuries committed by his wife :-) So a husband can run up a big debt and the wife's off the hook, and the wife can go bat-$#!+ crazy and the husband won't be liable for what she does. That's comforting.

--William

That is one refreshing statute. So you're ok as long as you don't let her go bat-$#!+ crazy against you because she may not be liable in that case. Smith v. Smith, 205 Or 286, 287 P2d 572 (1955). (In this case, a husband drove like a madman and almost got his wife killed and the court said, unless the legislature says otherwise, the court is not ready to carve out this area of family intimacy forbidding recovery or the "assumption of risk" law in marriage.)

I haven't studied community property law but in a community property state like NV, does after marriage acquired property automatically become community property?

[BKDefender]

PJP - Yes, in Nevada, and most other community property states, any after acquired property is presumed to be community property absent an agreement otherwise or proof that it was acquired by premarital or separate assets. For example, if before a person gets married they have $2M in the bank with a small 5% return so they get $100k/year income, they would have that deposited into a separate account with their name only and anything they purchased with that money would be separate property. Any wages earned or profit earned from physical/mental labor of a married person is community property and the spouse has a vested 50% interest in their other spouse's community property. If you want a big mind-boggler, look up 'Malmquist v. Malmquist' in Nevada. It requires a full blown excel spreadsheet to calculate the community property value of a premarital home where community property wages were used to pay the mortgage.

--William