The Basics On How Save Your House and Car in Bankruptcy.

Video Transcribed: Oklahoma City Bankruptcy Attorney Edward Kelley here, 1-888-DEBT-LINE, starting a series on how do I save my house and/or car in foreclosure. What we’re talking about here is a Chapter 13, so let me throw that in the title too. How to Save My House or Car Through a Chapter 13 Bankruptcy. Let’s start with the basics of a Chapter 13 as opposed to a 7.

Chapter 7 liquidation, meaning you keep your exempt property such as your home, if you’re current on the mortgage, your car, if you’re current on the payment, your IRA or 401k, if it’s properly set up, your household goods, everything else, liquidated. And by everything, that’s a pretty detailed list of what is and what isn’t. So we can deal with that in another video. But you generally get to keep your usual stuff.

If you’ve got a boat, if you’ve got a cabin, if you got oil royalties, those are probably going to go. Tax refunds that are owed, but you hadn’t received and spent also. That’s a 7, liquidation. Chapter 13 is a repayment. So what that means is you’re going to pay your creditors what you can, not what you owe, but what you can, for a period of five years. You’ll have to do a 13 if you have done a bankruptcy, a Chapter 7 in the last eight years, it’s from the date of filing, or if you make too much.

And for example, for a household of one, which is how they gauge it, IRS standards, 42,000 is about to cut off, after your legitimate expenses. Unusual expenses bring you down and you can still make it. But if you’re considerably over that, there’s probably not much chance you can do with 7, which case you’re doing a five-year plan.

If you’ve already done a bankruptcy or Chapter 7 in the last eight years, you can do a 13, possibly for three years if your income would have allowed you to do a 7. So now you know how to get into a 13. Now, you might be eligible for 7 and want to do a 13 anyway if you’re facing a problem in this series.

Lost my house or about to lose my house, not lost your house but about to lose it or about to lose my car and they won’t work with me. So if you’re at that point, Chapter 13 allows you to propose a plan to pay off everything you owe that will bring you current over the life of that plan or a car or a house, something where you have a purchase loan on it.

So that’s number one. This is how you can do it. So what you need to keep in mind, if you don’t make enough money to make the payments, meaning your regular payments on the car and/or house and the payments on the prearrange, spread out over a maximum of five years or 60 months, you can’t do it.

So in the next video we’re going to talk about specifics. How do you save your house in a Chapter 13? Really, the same things apply to the car, but we’ll deal with the house in the next one. As always, send me your questions. You can call me at 1-888-DEBT-LINE or email me at Edward@WirthLawOffice.com, or on Facebook at our group called Oklahomans for Debt Relief.