Bankruptcy Decision/Collection Agency Question

[ease]

I've spent about 3 hours online this morning do research and found this forum. What a relief to find you all!
DH and I are self employed in a fee for service business. It is a constant up and down. We have frequently paid mortgage payments and living expenses with credit cards. We now find ourselves with 120K in CC debt.
With what we bring in, we can squeak by paying our living expenses. We can no longer afford the 2200/month in minimums that we have been paying. We have received multiple notices increasing our interest rates....one up to 33%!!
We had a consult with a DMP yesterday. He essentially recommended looking into bankruptcy.
Since we made the decision Friday night, we have all weekend to educate ourselves.
We feel a strange sense of peace with this decision.
I'm wondering about collection agencies. We are current on all our payments right now. We use our income to pay the cc's and use the cc's to buy groceries and such....an awful cycle.
Once we file, do we stop paying our minimums and have the creditors start calling the house? I saw a thread about them finding your FB friends.
Are we protected from this by being up to date before we file?
I certainly hope so.

[deadbroke99]

We did the same using income to pay cc's and using cc's to buy food and such. I thought I would have so much money left over after I stopped paying cc's in Dec but I don't at all and that's the reason! I am now paying cash for food and gas. Stop paying those cc's as your throwing good money away as they will be discharged. Go set up a free consultation with several bankruptcy lawyers. Take your last 6 months of bank statements, pay stubs, and do a spreadsheet of all your bills. Also start adding up your assets, bank accounts, stock accounts, ira's, 401k's, household goods (garage sell values), 4-wheelers, lawn mowers, etc. So you can tell your lawyer exactly where you are. All of our assets can be exempted. I hope we can file ch 7 even though we make over the median for our state. We just started this process too. Good luck to you!

[OhioFiler]

We have been current on everything until we decided to start our planning stage. The calls have begun but after reading all the strategies on the forums we're prepared for them.

We also felt a sense of calm when we made the decision to pursue BK. It was underscored after we met the attorney.

[cityish]

I've spent about 3 hours online this morning do research and found this forum. What a relief to find you all!
DH and I are self employed in a fee for service business. It is a constant up and down. We have frequently paid mortgage payments and living expenses with credit cards. We now find ourselves with 120K in CC debt.
With what we bring in, we can squeak by paying our living expenses. We can no longer afford the 2200/month in minimums that we have been paying. We have received multiple notices increasing our interest rates....one up to 33%!!
We had a consult with a DMP yesterday. He essentially recommended looking into bankruptcy.
Since we made the decision Friday night, we have all weekend to educate ourselves.
We feel a strange sense of peace with this decision.
I'm wondering about collection agencies. We are current on all our payments right now. We use our income to pay the cc's and use the cc's to buy groceries and such....an awful cycle.
Once we file, do we stop paying our minimums and have the creditors start calling the house? I saw a thread about them finding your FB friends.
Are we protected from this by being up to date before we file?
I certainly hope so.

Welcome to the forum, Ease. You will find a lot of helpful info and support here. I don't always post here but I check in often and read the posts and it has helped me so much to begin educating myself on some very complicated issues. Good luck with your situation.

[HHM]

Once you file BK, collection activty essentially stops.