Hello everyone!
I am going through a divorce right now, and have moved out of our house and now renting a house for me and my daughter. I have so many credit cards (20 to be exact). I was able to maintain all my bills until now. I can't afford them anymore. Some of my bills are now 2-3 months behind. I went to see an attorney and he said that I needed to file CH 7.
The problem is I don't even have the money to pay the upfront fee so that I can file. I also had a loan for 4400 for a loan company that uses collateral to secure the loan. They have now served me with papers and I have to go to court.
My question is will it be too late if I file bankruptcy in August/September since my bills are getting farther and farther behind? Please any advice would be greatly appreciated.
File bankruptcy
Hi Calli,
There are other options to pay off your debt. Bankruptcy should be avoided at the most. It hurts your credit, and stays on your credit report for 7-10 years depending on the chapter of bankruptcy.
As you have multiple credit cards you can consolidate those into one. This will lessen your burden. As all the debts get consolidated into one, you will have to make only a single payment each month instead of the several each month. You can either take out a loan to pay off the debts, or you can do balance transfer.
Balance transfer is where you transfer the balances from all other high interest cards to a low interest one, or a 0% balance transfer card (if you can get one).
If consolidation does not work for you, you may have to file bankruptcy. However, in chapter 7 bankruptcy your assets can get liquidated to pay off your creditors. Thus, I think you should better consider the pros and cons of filing bankruptcy. If you can make some kind of payments atleast, you can also try to file chapter 13, which is a kind of repayment plan.
Thanks,
Aaron
you can sit down with a non profit credit counseling agency. NOT one of those scams where they promise to cut your debt in half.
http://www.nfcc.org/
this is required by the bankruptcy court and it will help you decide what to do.