How Did You Come Up With The Money To File

[CATCHMEIFYOUCAN]

I'm really curious, the Trustee never questions the $2000-$3000 amount of money you need to file Bankruptcy in the first place, yet its a big deal if you have a preferential payment to a creditor.

How did YOU come up with the money to file in the first place?

I got lucky and hit the lottery (PICK 4) for $2000. I only needed $1600 more to start the process. OTHERWISE It would have taken me overall 3-4 months to come up with the money working paycheck to paycheck. But I got lucky. How about YOU !

Catchmeifyoucan

[manglicmot]

I'm coming up with the money by no longer paying my creditors - that's about $1000 a month right there. So after next month I will have the $1000, everything will be one month late, and I will get another $1000 from my brokerage account.

[FilingOnMyOwn]

I've never heard of the trustee asking that question, although its a good one. Since I filed pro-se myself, I used less than $300 to file out of the $350 cash on hand I had, which was well under the $1,000 cash exemption anyways.

[BassBoy]

Considering I was surrenduring my home, I used the money that I would pay my mortgage with to pay my attorney and filing fee. Since I am old law Ch.7, the lawyer's fee was $800 and it was $209 for the filing fee.

Trustee never questioned where the money came from to file BK.

[kcj]

I had signed up for the legal plan offered by my work. It was for other reasons, but ended up coming in handy. So the lawyer was paid for; the filing fee was only a couple hundred dollars.

[brainless twit]

My parents gave us the $1200 we needed to file. By the time we admitted to ourselves that BK was the only option, we were so far behind we had NO money to save back and creditors were calling 50-60 times a day. They told us that seeing us start fresh was payback enough for them.

[reallynervous]

We'll be using our income tax refund to file.

[BKTango]

I paid $500 down, the rest in monthly installments of $380 for 6 months. The amount I pay a month is considerably less than what we were sending to the cc's or the debt settlement company. Two more payments.....then DONE. Trustee never asked us, and I kept asking the lawyer "Well won't they see this as being able to pay something?" Nope...Nada. It did state on my petition, or some paperwork with my bk that "after expenses and legal fees for representation there will be no funds/assets available" So the trustee knew about it.

[JollyGG]

We had a few hundread in savings and, while I hate to admit it, our kids each had a few hundread in savings and we raided their accounts (we are paying back the kids).
The rest we are paying the lawyer in monthly installments. My lawyer was great in that he didn't need the payment in full to file. So, we'll be paying him for a while.

[Hagar100]

Sold my Harley for 8 grand.

I owned it for over 25 years, had turned every bolt and nut on it at least once, had painted it myself 3 times, and it had faithfully carried me on many wonderful trips and adventures. It hurt alot to do that but my back was really to the wall at the time and I had no other liquid assets of any worth.

The trustee asked me what had happened to the money from the sale and I provided honest answers about using the money to provide for my family, repair a couple of our vehicles, pay my bankruptcy and divorce attorneys, etc. He seemed satisfied with what I told him and my no-pain, no-asset chapter 7 case closed on 01/17/07.

The good news is that I am now reconciling with my wife (who is finally getting some psychological help), I seem to be doing pretty well at rebuilding financially, and I am now actually in the process of buying my Harley back.

I'm not happy about having to go through the whole mess but I am grateful that it went as well as it did.

[SinkingFast]

We owed Uncle Sam $8K for taxes. The only way we could pay that was to sell our truck.

We had purchased the extended warranty on the truck when we bought it the year before. I went to a local Dodge dealer to try and sell the truck. Showed the "Buyer Guy" the extended warranty hoping that would make the deal more attractive.

The Dealer's Buyer directed me to a smaller "Buy Here/Pay Here" lot down the street that would pay more for our truck. AND the guy said, don't show them that Warranty paper. He said I could sell the truck, then bring the extended warranty back to them and cash it out with Dodge.

So, I went and sold the truck to the other Dealer. That got us our $8K to pay the IRS.

Then we went back to the Dodge Dealer and cashed out the extended warranty. We got over $2K back from Chrysler on that. That's how we paid our attny and filing fee.

[jal1129]

We already had'nt paid any cc in 6-8 months and were just barely getting by (DH in an accident and not working) so that route was'nt an option for us.

I asked the lawyer if it would be alright if someone gave us the money and she said yes "nobody ever asks where you get the money from". So we went that route.

[lrprn]

We didn't pay our credit cards for five months, so we saved up the money to pay our Ch 13 lawyer from that. Truly a bit of poetic justice since the raising of our APRs to 30% and all the cc late fees are what finally pushed us into Ch 13 anyway

[NowOrNever]

We stopped paying CCs and had our tax return. Plus, our lawyer only charged us 1K. We were originally going to go CH 13 and pay him 1K up front and 1K through the plan. After we'd paid our up front money, it was determined that we would go CH7 and he said that he wouldn't charge us any additional. I really can't say enough good things about him. Glad it worked out, because I spoke with him before I found this site and paid the retainer that day. He was the only consult I had. Guess I got lucky.

[petrified]

Saved

I saved up for a couple of months.....all saved at my own "personal bank"

No more bricks & mortar sheister banks for me! My bank is open 24hrs, doesn't charge any fees, doesn't require my id and a pint of blood.....hehehe. I actually feel very liberated going to a cash only lifestyle.