Do-it-yourself bankruptcy

[anonymuse]

Seriously, how do lawyers get paid? Are payment plans usually available? If I had $100 a month to give to a lawyer, I wouldn't be looking at bankruptcy! ;)

Are lawyers considered a "preferred" creditor? Say you sell something to get $1K and pay the lawyer, is this showing preferential treatment to a creditor prior to filing for bankruptcy?

[aa06a47]

If your going to do a chapter 13, then you can usually put a down payment down and they will finance the rest in the plan (they will get paid before the creditors). If your doing a chapter 7, most attorney's I've seen will have you quit making payments to your creditors and pay them. Once you have paid there fees, they will file the bk for you.

[kikyou]

I did my 7 myself. Never occurred to me to hire a lawyer. In fact, I know several people who have filed 7 and 13 in my town and none of them used lawyers. I was surprised to show up at the hearing and see that only three of use had done it ourselves. Where did all those people get the money to hire a lawyer? None of the people I know had any money for that so we all did it ourselves. There were no problems and the judge had no questions. He asked the lawyer - represented people lots of questions, however.

[anonymuse]

I did my 7 myself. Never occurred to me to hire a lawyer. In fact, I know several people who have filed 7 and 13 in my town and none of them used lawyers. I was surprised to show up at the hearing and see that only three of use had done it ourselves. Where did all those people get the money to hire a lawyer? None of the people I know had any money for that so we all did it ourselves. There were no problems and the judge had no questions. He asked the lawyer - represented people lots of questions, however.

That's the catch-22 for me. If I could afford a lawyer, then I wouldn't need to file for bk. But I went to a monthly meeting that trustees hold for those that want to do-it-yourself and they highly highly discouraged it with the new laws.

[aa06a47]

If your debt is such that 100/month would pay it, (not sure I understand what you said in your initial post) I am not sure BK is what you need. Do you mean if you had 100/month leftover after paying your credit card/other bills?

[Sean Tyrer]

What an interesting post!