Goodbye Debt, Hello Freedom
The second video, we talked about who qualifies to do a 7, and we talked about the means test cap. It’s a gross income level. If you, your family’s size is under it, your gold. If you’re over it, you need to have expenses provable, dollar for dollar, that pull you back down under. If so, once again, you’re gold. You can only do it Chapter 7 once every eight years. So, regardless of your income, if it’s been less than eight years since the last date of filing, then you cannot do it.
Okay, what we’re going to talk about today and our remaining two minutes on financial freedom is, how does the case work? Pretty simple. 90 days, like clockwork, start to finish. You hire me, we get your documents together, and we file them. Clock starts.
You have something called a 341 creditor meeting 30 days into the case. That’s an opportunity for your creditors to ask you questions. So, if you haven’t been entirely honest with me or you’re hiding a valuable item that one of your creditors knows about and you didn’t tell me, they may pop up at the hearing and say, “Hey, what gives?” It’s also the time the trustee can ask you questions and make sure that you provided correct information, go over any discrepancies or any questions about your assets that they may have. Very simple, very quick, and usually takes five minutes per case.
Right now, due to COVID, everything is virtual. You don’t have to go to court. In fact, you can do bankruptcy, you can hire me and do it without leaving your house if you so desire or need to. Everyone calls in, it’s by telephone. It’s not even Zoom. Call in, mute, and stay on hold. They call your case, and five minutes later you’re done. And if there are any problems, they can continue it and ask for more. But even if you’re last in line and things are running behind, usually it’s not more than an hour out of your day and you can do it from home.
What’s next? Well, then the reaffirmation. You want to keep that car that you have and that you’re paying on in bankruptcy. You need to re-sign that note because personal property can be repoed even if you’re current if you don’t do it. Very important. And so, not every office will do that for you. My office does. That needs to be done, and you need to take a second post-filing little online class, which we’ll talk more about in another video. Need to do that. And that’s it.
That’s in the 60 days between the creditor meeting and the discharge of the case. 90 days, if everything’s gone as it should, as it almost always does, you get a discharge as we talked about. That means that debt is uncollectible. For all intents and purposes, it’s gone, and you’re good to go. And that’s today’s Three Minutes to Financial Freedom.
For more information, you can reach out to me, a chapter 7 bankruptcy lawyer in Oklahoma City, at oklahomacitybankruptcyattorney.pro.