But if you end there, you may believe that filing for bankruptcy is a financial cakewalk. Therein lies your error.
Consider a client who recently filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy for $299, the filing fee alone. There was no attorney involved, and he drafted the documents without any paid assistance. He did an excellent job as well. He was confident that he did not need to hire a lawyer after conducting extensive study and research on the varieties of bankruptcy, required forms, and procedures.
Considering that he was declaring bankruptcy, how could he be expected to pay for an attorney?
Six weeks after filing, he was in my office because he was being compelled to surrender his home to the trustee.
What occurred? This intelligent and well-prepared gentleman filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy without employing or paying for an attorney because he believed he could do it himself. And he was able. The issue was not whether he could file for bankruptcy on his own, but whether he was able to make the correct decisions when taking steps to eliminate his debt.
My client's story has a joyful ending, despite a painful lesson being learned. We converted his case from Chapter 7 to Chapter 13, which will allow him to reorganize his personal finances and repay a portion of his debts over time, allowing him to retain his home. In exchange for making payments, he gets to retain his home.
However, the procedure of converting his case was expensive. In actuality, he had to pay a much larger legal fee to get him out of the pit he dug for himself rather than filing for Chapter 13 bankruptcy, which would have cost him a relatively small sum.
We had to file motions with the court to get permission to convert his case from Chapter 7 to Chapter 13 (there is no automatic right to do this, so we had to get court approval), fight with his Chapter 7 trustee over the conversion (the Chapter 7 trustee receives a commission on the sale of property, so he was upset that we were converting the case and preventing him from making a substantial amount of money), and ultimately re-draft his entire bankruptcy petition and schedules.
Our client filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy for the lowest filing fee feasible. He devoted his time and effort to learning as much as possible about bankruptcy. In the end, he spent three times the amount required to escape debt and regain control of his life.
As stated at the outset of this article, declaring bankruptcy may be affordable or extremely costly. Hiring a competent and experienced attorney to represent you may seem expensive at first, but it will save you a ton of money and headaches in the long run.
" - https://www.affordablecebu.com/
