Your Bankruptcy Lawyer Is Your Friend!

Let me repeat that. Your bankruptcy lawyer is your friend.

He is there to help you get a fresh start on your credit problems.

Each person that gets into serious debt brings to that situation their own set of coping skills.

Some don’t open the bills and mail they get from debt collectors and just let the unopened correspondence pile up, others throw it directly into the garbage can.

Many turn off their answering machine so they don’t have to listen to messages left by debt collectors and screen their calls using caller ID.

Some will speak to the debt collector and make promises they can’t keep (with the best of intentions to honor those promises), and some will have the sheriff come to their door with a notice of foreclosure and wait until the morning of the sale to contact a bankruptcy attorney in a last minute effort to save their house.

While these “skills” might assist in avoiding talking to your creditors, from time to time a client will carry these avoidance skills into their dealings with their attorney. This can have serious consequences.

I recently had a client who came into my office around 9:00 a.m. with a notice of foreclosure with a Sheriff’s sale scheduled for 1:00 p.m. that same day.

I prepared an emergency Chapter 13 bankruptcy and had it filed and sent notice to the Sheriff and the foreclosure attorney in time to stop the sale.

The client was to return with the documents necessary to prepare his bankruptcy and repayment plan the next day.

He never showed up. I am my assistant would try to call and e-mail the client, we would send him letters, yet he would either not respond, or he would leave a voice mail on the office telephone service before or after our regular business hours.

His e-mails would provide “reasons” why he did not come in, why he did not have the documents and would normally request a rescheduled meeting at which he was a no show.

We filed pleadings to extend the time to file his bankruptcy documents and the extension ran out.

His Chapter 13 case was ultimately dismissed.

A month or so later same person comes in. House is scheduled for foreclosure at 1:00 p.m. that afternoon. Brings in all of his documentation with the exception of tax returns.

We file another emergency Chapter 13 bankruptcy along with a motion to extend his stay and prepare the necessary documents for his bankruptcy.

Client will schedules, fails to appear and reschedules meetings to sign the documents, never produces his tax returns and is missing in action.

There are a number of sayings that sum up this situation: “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink!” comes to mind.

Your bankruptcy attorney is there to help you, but you have to help yourself. Your bankruptcy is a road out of you debt problems.