Secured Loans Affected by Covid-19?

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Video Transcribed: Oklahoma City Bankruptcy Attorney Edward Kelley here at 888 Debtline, As always answering your bankruptcy questions. Continuing our series, the silver lining of the coronavirus pandemic, why this may be the best time you’ll have in your life to file a chapter 7 or 13.

So this is day three in the series. We talked first about how your stimulus check may give you the ability to file bankruptcy when you had no idea you would be able to. Second, we talked about your lowered income may help you qualify for a 7 when you didn’t or give you a much lower chapter 13 payment than you would have had.

Third reason, and this is one I haven’t talked about so much in the past, but your secured loans, things you’re going to keep, your home mortgage, your car payment, certain other loans with collateral or even some unsecured loans that you may be wanting to keep for whatever reason.

Most of them, if not all of them, are offering forbearance, letting you skip the next two or three months’ payments, put it on the back end of the loan or foregoing any kind of credit reporting or penalties for not paying for a month. And this is unprecedented, at least in my memory, of this being allowed.

But that’s another benefit of this pandemic is we’re seeing a lot of altruistic, good community effort to help people get through this time. You may be getting rent forgiveness. Most utilities aren’t cutting off. So in addition to having that stimulus, being able to file bankruptcy, having lowered income, that helps you qualify, you can also have some breathing room on top of that.

Now I don’t recommend for people… some loan companies are actually capitalizing on it by letting you not pay for a couple months, but then they want you to pay all three months at the end of that time. That is not a good deal for most people.

I’m talking about modifications that let you pay at the end of the loan, meaning just a longer period of time, not additional payments stacked together, but combined with doing your bankruptcy, having some breathing room, either to complete the fee for the bankruptcy and/or catch up your secured debts that may or may not be behind.

Again, these combined factors make this a unique and probably once in a lifetime opportunity, hopefully once in a lifetime opportunity, to successfully complete a chapter 7 and/or a lowered payment in your 13, and get yourself out of debt forever. So what a great silver lining to this trying time.

So we’ve got one more great reason coming up tomorrow. And then I’m going to do an overview on day five. As always, you can reach me at 1-888-debtline, edward@wirthawoffice.com or on Facebook, or if you’re viewing this somewhere else, check us out on Facebook at our Facebook group, Oklahomans For Debt Relief. Talk to you soon.