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Posted By
Dave Johnsen
The filing of a Chapter 13 has an interesting effect. It consolidates and reorganizes all of your personal debt into one payment to the trustee each month. The analysis that goes into this deals with all of your expenses, income, assets, and debt to determine the payment. The payment can go up if it includes payment for certain secured debt in the plan, like a car of mortgage. This can help ...
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Posted By
Dave Johnsen
When someone files for bankruptcy, their case is assigned to an interim trustee who handles the administering of the case from the onset to discharge. In Chapter 7 cases, this is usually a short period of time, unless the case is determined at the 341 hearing to have assets that can be distributed to creditors. In Chapter 13, however, the trustee works on the case for three to five years and has a ...
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Posted By
Dave Johnsen
One of the driving thrusts behind the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform laws (known as BAPCPA) was an effort to make it more "difficult" to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. There were several reasons and rationales behind this, not the least of which were credit card lobbying efforts, but the end result was the desired result: it has become more difficult to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy because of income ...
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Posted By
Dave Johnsen
In today's upside down real estate market, it is quite common for prospective debtors to seek bankruptcy help in an attempt to remove a second mortgage on their property. These mortgages were taken out of the equity when the home still had good value, but with the recession's plummeting home values now sit as fully unsecured liens. A good portion of these prospective debtors are those who normally ...
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Posted By
Dave Johnsen
For a home on the brink of or in active foreclosure, the options to the homeowner(s) may seem limited. They can try a loan modification to save the home, but often they feel they have to ditch the home and move on. They try to do this through a short sale, deed in lieu of foreclosure, or perhaps even just abandoning the home altogether. Little do they know, however, that Chapter 13 offers perhaps ...
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Posted By
Dave Johnsen
When most debtors understand that you can keep your home in the Chapter 7 bankruptcy, they begin asking how. In Chapter 7, there are really two options: reaffirm, or more informally, pay and retain. A reaffirmation agreement is one that essentially reobligates your obligation to the loan. Whereas the filing of the bankruptcy discharges your liability to the secured mortgage debt, the reaffirmation ...
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Posted By
Dave Johnsen
You can call this the age of the student loan. In recent months, the total amount of outstanding student loan debt surpassed 1 Trillion dollars. That's 12 zeroes. This amount now goes back and forth with credit cards to comprise the majority of unsecured debt that Americans have. The problem is, however, that while the vast majority of credit card debt is dischargeable in any bankruptcy, student ...
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Posted By
Dave Johnsen
Often, when people purchase a home or condo, there is an association incorporated into the community where the new home is. This could be a homeowner's association or condo association, but the results are nearly always the same: you must pay them a separate bill each month. This bill, usually added as a standard rider to the sales contract on your home, could pay for any range of things. Failure ...
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