Keep What You Can, Give up What You Must
Video Transcribed: Hi everybody, Edward Kelly here, your bankruptcy lawyer in Oklahoma, with another three minutes to financial freedom. As always, we’re going to do one of these every weekday, Monday through Friday. Today we’re on the fourth video in a series, Is Chapter 7 Right for Me? And we’ve talked about income, there are IRS guidelines if you’re under, absolutely qualified to do it. If you’re over, either you can’t or you need expenses continuing past the bankruptcy that will bring you back down. And then we talked in another video about what kind of debt do I have. Is it dischargeable? Can I get rid of it? Why would I do this if I can’t? Most debt is absolutely dischargeable. Unsecured debts, credit cards, signature loans, medical bills, and all that, are dischargeable. The things that aren’t are taxes. Actually, you can discharge taxes that are three years or older. A lot of people are surprised and very happy by that. Three years or less from the date of filing, not dischargeable. Student loans, if they’re backed by the government, are not dischargeable. Child support is never dischargeable. Court costs and fines are not dischargeable.
So if all your debt’s that, that’s one situation. But if you’ve got a mixture and you’ve got a considerable amount of debt you can discharge, even if there’s some leftover, Chapter 7 may well be right for you. So today we’re going to talk about the third and final factor, and is Chapter 7 right for me? What’s my property situation? So when you do a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, you’re giving up, they’re taking away all your dischargeable debt. In exchange, you’re giving up any property you have that is not exempt.
Most of your stuff’s exempt. Your household belongings, your house generally is going to be exempt if you live there and it’s not, you know, over an acre in city limits or over 60 or more out of city limits. Your car, up to 7,500 value, they can’t touch that, that’s exempt. Your normal day-to-day stuff. But if you have two, three, or four vehicles, you’ve got an RV, camper, boat, motorcycle, or four-wheeler, you may not want to lose those things and those are things that are up for grabs in a bankruptcy.
So you want to look closely at your property situation. Do I have a house and car that I can protect or maybe I don’t have those and I don’t need to protect them? And do I have things that I’m going to lose in the bankruptcy? And there may be ways to legitimately plan for the bankruptcy to address that, so that shouldn’t prevent you from calling me and looking at Chapter 7, but that’s a factor you really want to look at. What do I have to lose, basically? Homes exempt, cars exempt, up to a certain value, and household belongings exempt. But if you have some really valuable stuff, you’ve got to think, is it worth giving this up to get rid of all that debt?
So that’s our video for today. As always, you can reach me, a Chapter 7 attorney in Oklahoma City, at edwardkelleylaw.com, that’s K-E-L-L-E-Y law at gmail.com, or you can call me directly at 580-478-3130.