Lawyer recommeded seperation from spouse to obtain Chapter 7...thoughts?

[szzbrwn6]

As if this whole screwed up situation isn't enough to deal with, our attorney (after we paid $550) told my wife and I that we "make too much" about $100K combined yearly. I won't go into the sob story of how we got here but at the end of the day we've made some bad decisions, had some uncontrollable circumstances and we're drowning (about $60K in cc and bank debt). He didn't even run a means test because he said we make too much and they will through it out anyway. Only thing we can do is reduce our salary by $1000 per month (meaning she quits her job) or she needs to move out, change her address and we need to seperate so we can file seperatley. Chpt. 13 is out of the question...we were told our payment would be around $1000 per month...not sure how they are coming up with this excess but I'm scared out of my mind and want to get this resolved for my family.

BTW, when we asked how the heck can we have an excess of $1,000 and he said they factor it at 4.33 weeks per month not 4. So confused.

HELP!

[tobee43]

just file seperately...maybe one will quaify for a 7 while the other spouse a 13.

also, let him or her know you want to SEE the means test he or she ran to make such a determination

[szzbrwn6]

All of our debt is joint...is it legal to seperate for the sake of filing 2 chapter 7 bankruptcies? Don't want to seperate but if that's what we need to do we're going to have to do it until this mess is over.

[debee]

BTW, when we asked how the heck can we have an excess of $1,000 and he said they factor it at 4.33 weeks per month not 4. So confused.

The 4.33 comes from the number of days per year divided by the number of months divided by the number of days in a week. The answer is around 4.33 (depending how many days per year you use).

You're about 25K over the median for a household of two. It's not impossible to file a chapter 7 with that much income, but you usually need to have high secured payments (house/car) and/or high medical. Too late to arrange a big house payment. Depending on what you're driving now, might help your case to buy two new non-luxury-brand cars.

Your attorney isn't the first to recommend having one spouse quit working. Other forum members were given the same advice, and some took it and have since been discharged. In the case I'm thinking of one spouse developed malaise, fatigue & general soreness (after the attorney visit) and left employment to rest up at home. Not sure if your spouse is bringing home 1K gross, or if that's what remains after 401K, taxes, etc. Either way, it sounds like she has the sort of job/income that wouldn't be hard to recapture down the road.

You might want to try out the online Means Test and see what you get when you take it as if your wife wasn't working and see where you stand. We failed it the first few times we took it and we made some lifestyle/budget adjustments and subsequently passed. You can see it here.

Also, I think sometimes a chapter 13 seems impossible until you find out that it's your only choice. If that becomes the case, from the way I've read it described, what changes to make it seem possible after all is the way you see things.