Do you feel like your debts are getting away from you? Are you overwhelmed and anxious about paying your bills? Do you need some relief from your creditors? Are you beginning to think that you should be looking into filing a bankruptcy?

Over the years, I’ve spoken to lots of people in your situation, who are just beginning to look into finding an attorney to help them with bankruptcy. Many of these people call with one question for me — “what’s y
our fee?”.   When I ask if they have any other questions about bankruptcy and how it works, they’re not interested. They want the cheapest attorney, no matter what kind of representation they get. [Read more…]

Most people looking into filing a bankruptcy understand that a chapter 7 bankruptcy wipes out all the debts you want to get rid of, while allowing you to keep certain exempt assets. If you file under chapter 7 and have assets that are not protected by exemptions, then those assets are “liquidated” (sold) by the chapter 7 Trustee and the proceeds are divided among your creditors. That is why chapter 7 is known as the Liquidation chapter.

Chapter 13 bankruptcy is a bit more complicated for people to understand. It is known as the Individual’s Debt Adjustment chapter. There are times when a chapter 7 bankruptcy doesn’t serve your purposes. Although you need to deal with your debts to get them under control, there is some obstacle in your way, such as a paid-off vehicle that you need to keep to get you to work. That is a situation where a chapter 13 bankruptcy could be more beneficial to you than filing a chapter 7 where you would lose the vehicle to the Trustee/creditors. Another instance where a chapter 13 is helpful is if you’ve fallen several months behind in your mortgage payments, and need time to bring them current. A chapter 7 will not give you that time, but a chapter 13 will.   Further, if your income is over the median amount for your state, as set up by the Census Bureau, current bankruptcy law compels you to file under chapter 13 rather than 7. [Read more…]

If you own a home, you should have a policy of homeowner’s insurance in place to protect you against certain disasters that could damage that home. Your mortgage carrier requires you to carry a policy to protect its interest. Chances are good that sometime during your ownership, some event will happen resulting in you filing a claim with your insurance company. If you’ve not yet had to use your insurance, you may wonder how that works. Or, if you have filed a claim and the insurance company is denying the coverage you expected, you may be wondering what you should do next.

Your primary contact with your insurance company is through your agent. An insurance “agent” is a person who has a contractual relationship with one or more insurance companies to sell and issue policies on their behalf. The agent’s job is to take your application and issue the policy. The agent is therefore considered to be a legal representative of the insurance company, which is then legally bound by its agent’s actions in obtaining and placing insurance coverage. This relationship between the agent and the company exists as a matter of Ohio law, even if the written language of the application or policy suggest otherwise. However, if you have a loss and you find that the coverage the company is willing to provide on your claim is not what you expected, it is unlikely that you will be successful suing the agent. The extent of the agent’s legal duty is to assess what coverage you need and to provide the best available policy. If the agent has discussed whether you’d be best off purchasing a policy that specifically details the risks that are covered rather than a slightly more expensive policy that covers all risks not specifically excluded, he has in all probability fulfilled his duty to you. [Read more…]

My most recent blogs have discussed bankruptcy topics that worry people looking into filing under either Chapter 7 or Chapter 13. I also have extensive experience with insurance policies, both in providing legal representation to people under the terms of their insurance policies, and also to people who have had to sue their own insurance companies for coverage. I have had considerable success in both types of litigation. In the process of both defending insureds faced with suits brought against them and in pursuing the rights of insureds who have not gotten fair treatment by their own insurance carriers, I have come across many issues that confuse the average policy holder.

One significant issue for a policy holder is the meaning of a “reservation of rights letter” received from their insurance company in regard to a claim. Basically, you purchase home and automobile insurance expecting that if you are ever sued or have a claim made against you for damages, your insurance company will represent you and pay on the claim, if warranted.   For example, if you accidently rear end another car, you expect that your insurance company will negotiate with the other driver and pay the claim. If the matter ultimately goes to a law suit, you expect under the terms of your automobile insurance policy that your insurer will supply you at no charge with an attorney to represent you.   And, in most instances, the claim works itself out in just that way.

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Suppose you’ve filed a bankruptcy in which you plan to surrender your home to the mortgage lender/bank. The bank may or may not have filed a foreclosure action to legally take it back yet. You are likely wondering if you have to move out immediately. The answer is that you do not. You should have, at the very least, several months where you can remain in your home mortgage-free, if not indefinitely. You have the right to live in your home until the property is sold. At that point, the deed will be taken out of your name and you will no longer own the home. You will be notified when that takes place and given a reasonable time to move out.

Keep in mind that the legal procedure by which a bank takes back real estate is through a foreclosure action filed in your county’s common pleas court. In that filing, they give notice not only to you, but also to any other creditor who may have an interest in the property, such as second mortgage holder or the county treasurer to see if real estate taxes are owing on the property. If the foreclosure action was filed before you filed your bankruptcy, it is temporarily “stayed” by the bankruptcy filing. The attorney for the bank will have to file a motion for “relief” from the automatic stay to go forward with the foreclosure action. Getting the relief order from the bankruptcy court takes about a month.

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You may decide that struggling to keep a house that is too expensive isn’t doing you or your family any good.  You may be sacrificing other benefits you’d like to provide for your family or yourself rather than put every dollar into your mortgage payments or worry about how you will make next month’s payment.  You may be at the point of wanting to let the bank/mortgage company take the house back. Unfortunately, you likely owe more on the mortgage than the house is worth on the market.  Over the past several years, we saw the values of real estate go way down.  Although those values are beginning to rise again, they are not where they were when you bought your home.  At the same time, you may be making less income from your employment or had some other life event where your income has been impacted, such as illness or divorce.

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The quick answer is that even if you overlook listing a creditor in your bankruptcy papers, you may be protected by your bankruptcy discharge from having any responsibility for paying that debt. Basically, it depends upon whether or not you have to pay any money in to the Trustee, or surrender any property for the Bankruptcy Trustee to sell and distribute among your creditors.

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Most of my clients desperately want to keep their homes, even if the payments are very burdensome on their incomes.  Most people are strongly attached to the house where they are raising their families, their neighborhood where their kids go to school, and their place of shelter from the outside world.  I understand that.  I feel the same way about my home.  On the other hand, sometimes life makes it hard enough to just keep food on the table, clothes on the kids, and utilities running.  You may have medical bills due to an injury or illness, or you may have recently become divorced.  You may be trying to get by on less money because your work hours were cut, or you might have your own business that’s struggling. For reasons you could not have predicted, you find yourself going month after month without any money left over to pay your mortgage.  You have what’s referred to as an “arrearage”, meaning you owe for one or more months in addition to your normal monthly mortgage payment.  There are ways in which a bankruptcy, either a 7 or 13, can help keep you and your family in your home.

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