NY Newbie

[madyoungpoor]

I'm married, 4 kids, purchased house 18mths ago, 1 mortgage, no equity. I'm buried in about 25,000 unsecured debt. Wife has no debt, no income and is in school. I make $40,000/ year. I've received my 2009 state and fed refunds and spend them on home repairs. I don't really own anything. I walked into our marriage with basically a duffel bag full of clothes 10 years ago and every household item is either owned by both of us or our children. If she booted me out right now, I'd probably leave with a duffel bag full of clothes.
Anyway, I'm filing chapter 7. Am I to expect the trustee to come into my home and load up a u-haul with our heavily used furniture, TV, kids toys etc? I've just begun to speak with attorneys and have gotten a lot of scare tactics.

[mtbc]

Which state are you in? (Do you know which court district too?)

Do you want to keep the home?

The trustee is rather unlikely to be interested in your battered old furniture, etc. Often how it goes is you guess some second-hand price for your stuff (often way under what it retails for brand new if it's anything like ours!) in different categories to list among your assets and, well, it doesn't sound like you'd have enough value in it that the trustee would want to bother even it weren't exempt. Apart from home repairs, you haven't been making any large purchases lately?

I'm thus surprised you're getting scare tactics.

[backtoschool]

New York has a $5,000 personal property/household goods exemption. All of your furniture, clothing, etc. would go under that exemption.

There is a 50k homestead exemption, but since you have no equity, that is not an issue.

With your income and family size, you will most likely pass the means test and be a candidate for chapter 7.

[madyoungpoor]

Only thing we bought was clothes for the kids, heating fuel, caught up on bills. she got a laptop for school for ~$1200. She's not filing bankruptcy, the house and every debt is in my name, which I hear is uncommon. I haven't used any credit cards since June of 09.

[backtoschool]

Only thing we bought was clothes for the kids, heating fuel, caught up on bills. she got a laptop for school for ~$1200. She's not filing bankruptcy, the house and every debt is in my name, which I hear is uncommon. I haven't used any credit cards since June of 09.

I would exempt the laptop just to be on the safe side. You have plenty of room in your household exemptions to cover it.