Good bk lawyer recomm in Phoenix/tell me your story

[waldo05]

Hello everyone,

Just wanted to know if anyone has gone through the BK process here in Phoenix and what are some of the pitfalls you faced as you were getting ready for this process a few other questions I also have are:

1. if anyone has a good BK lawyer to recommend (or anyone I should avoid

2. Has anyone qualified for CH 7 with an income above the meadian?


3. With the housing market in the tank here in Phx (like everywhere else) What did you decided to do with your home (we are upsidedown about 110,000 on a 234,000 loan), but if our Modification goes through, we can afford to stay (but would it be worth it?)

4. Has anyone gone though a BK while in the middle of the "Home Affordability" Re-Fi program? If so, how did it affect it? We are currently on our 5th month of our trial period at our new payment, but have yet to receive paperwork on the Finalization of the Modification.

5. How long did you wait after a big charge on Credit Card to file and when did you stop paying the ones without the big charge? Our charge was for the 2nd half of our adoption fee (about 9000), our parents were going to help when we started this process 18 months ago (and paid the first half), but are no longer able to (thus had to put on CC inorder to complete the adoption.

6. How does your student loan /debt/payments figure into (if at all) qualifing for Ch 7

Any other advice would be great, I hate not paying my debt, but with all of the recent "unforseen" obligations and mounting CC debt of 100k, I cant keep playing the minimum payment game and survive

Thanks in advance!

[HHM]

1. This forum, as a rule, discourages attorney recommendations (think about it, you are getting a referral from an anonymous source)

2. It's possible, but you need to either have out-of-the-ordinary expenses to do so (high mortgage, medical, etc), or be a non-consumer (business) case. If you have run of the mill family expenses and are over median, you won't be able to do chapter 7).

3. If you are that upside down, definitely NOT worth it. You are far better off walking, and buying again in two years, it will take you 10+ years to be back to even on that house if you stay.

4. See answer two, home is not worth saving and you probably won't get the modification if you are that upside down. However, filing BK in the middle of a modification kills the modification process.

5. You should probably wait 6 months, but the creditor has to prove fraud. I think a judge would have a hard time ruling that an adoption expenses is bad faith.

6. It doesn't. The bad news, you cannot claim the student loan payment as an expense to help you qualify for chapter 7.

[CCsAreEvil]

6. It doesn't. The bad news, you cannot claim the student loan payment as an expense to help you qualify for chapter 7.

I didn't even know this. That's a shame they don't let you count student loans as an expense, especially since you can't even discharge that debt. Bizarre.

I've "heard" (yeah, some people pull stats out of their ssa) that of all the loan mod apps, only about 7% have actually gone through. I don't know the exact numbers on a neighbor's case (few houses down the street), but he was actually able to do a loan mod. He was on one of these ARMs where I think you pay interest only for 2-3 years and then it balloons or something. He was able to mod it to a $1,200 monthly payment. Then I think every year or 2, it goes up another $300 per month. He said eventually, it will be $2,200 in 5 years or something. He's hopefully to either refi or get a different home by then.

I'm also in AZ with about $255 on the 1st and $115 on the 2nd. Zillow claims about $275k in value (yeah, right). I just stopped paying the 2nd in January.

It's funny, in the local Phoenix paper, you'd see articles trying to claim Phoenix metro home sales have gone up and values and crap. It's all baloney. This is going to be another sad year. I don't see the economy/job market improving that much at all. A lot of people are struggling.

[Meatstick]

I didn't even know this. That's a shame they don't let you count student loans as an expense, especially since you can't even discharge that debt. Bizarre.

I've "heard" (yeah, some people pull stats out of their ssa) that of all the loan mod apps, only about 7% have actually gone through. I don't know the exact numbers on a neighbor's case (few houses down the street), but he was actually able to do a loan mod. He was on one of these ARMs where I think you pay interest only for 2-3 years and then it balloons or something. He was able to mod it to a $1,200 monthly payment. Then I think every year or 2, it goes up another $300 per month. He said eventually, it will be $2,200 in 5 years or something. He's hopefully to either refi or get a different home by then.

I'm also in AZ with about $255 on the 1st and $115 on the 2nd. Zillow claims about $275k in value (yeah, right). I just stopped paying the 2nd in January.

It's funny, in the local Phoenix paper, you'd see articles trying to claim Phoenix metro home sales have gone up and values and crap. It's all baloney. This is going to be another sad year. I don't see the economy/job market improving that much at all. A lot of people are struggling.

The Arizona "rag" Republic is one of, if not the worst newspaper that covers a metro area the size of Phoenix. Try reading the online version and its very obvious they don't believe in using grammar or spell check.

There is a very poor job outlook in this area and the housing is even worse. There are 14 homes on our street and our home and one other are the only homes that have NOT forcelosed at least once the past few years. Our home is worth less then half of what we paid for it and bigger homes are selling for half of our supposed value. From a business point of view it makes no sense at all to try and keep the house and as such will be letting our castle go back when the school year is finished.

The hard part is the moral and emotional attachment we have to our home but it is not the end of the world.

[goneunder]

As far as finding a good BK atty. it is one of those things you just have to bust out the yellow pages and call. I spoke with about 25 until I had that Hallelujah moment. I found a guy who instantly made me feel comfortable and has plenty of references to check out.

[peter85040]

Hello, all, I am new to this forum. It was day 60 from my 341 hearing on 4-9-10, so I was kinda freaking out, but after reading a lot of the posts on here am not so worried. Anyway, the attorney I used here in phoenix was (name removed by moderator). He rocked. Because I am such a neurotic worry-wart i must have sent him 50+ emails, and got replies to all of them within one day, usually later on in the day! He is very competent and really does care.