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[vida]

What about seniors on social security just defaulting on your unsecured high interest debt and let the chips fall where they may? The creditors can't really take anything if you have no assets and just rent. Possible judgements? Anyone experience with this? Bankruptcy is there if it gets bad.

[shipo]

What about seniors on social security just defaulting on your unsecured high interest debt and let the chips fall where they may? The creditors can't really take anything if you have no assets and just rent. Possible judgements? Anyone experience with this? Bankruptcy is there if it gets bad.

While I have no actual experience in this area (I'm a "Senior" but still working), my gut tells me a judgement, even if your entire income is from Social Security, could hurt you.

[Carmella]

I had a friend who was a senior/was retired and she filed Chapter 7.

[Barbisi]

I too had a very dear senior friend, now long departed who apparently had to file in the '90s.
I only found out by accident when we were moving her to her final destination, a nursing home in 2001. I came across the BK papers and I was so embarrassed to find out, I didn't look at them long enough to discover which chapter it was, I only saw the date: 1993.
I assume it must have been a 7 because she had no income or savings besides her SS check since she no longer owned her home and she had ended up renting one of the five rental homes she and her late husband had previously owned in the past. She had been a real estate agent and had somehow maxed out her CCs and couldn't repay them, according to the documents I briefly perused.
I felt so sorry for her, but I never asked or tried to understand how something so sad had befallen her.
She had to rely on Medicaid and for a time stubbornly held on to an annuity she was trying to pass on to her wayward daughter, who was living on the streets of LA and was beyond contacting by phone or letter. In the end, the nursing home not only had to "spend down" her bank account and annuity, but the employees helped themselves to her very nice antique furniture and decorations in order to empty out her little rented house. Luckily, we were able to collect many of these heirlooms and with her blessing and permission, continue to preserve and display them to this very day as cherished "family" items along with my grandmother's things.
Whether or not they are valuable to us is immaterial - they are a warm daily reminder of our friend who passed away in 2005. As far as I know, her daughter was never located, and I was informed by the nursing home that a distant cousin inherited her wedding ring and silverware upon her death.
I think of her often when I glimpse her cinnabar lamp or Asian figurines which are lovingly visible in our curio cabinet.
And I wish that her daughter could have been there to inherit everything that was rightfully hers, instead of strangers and us, her honorary "cousins".