To File Your Case, Your Lawyer Will Need All Info, All At One Time

When you file your bankruptcy case, whether it is a Chapter 7, Chapter 13, or Chapter 11, you will have to put together a lot of financial information, and make it available to your attorney.  The more complicated your financial situation, the more information you will need to provide, but almost everyone finds that it takes some time and effort to put it together.  And then there is the timing issue: your attorney needs you to put it all together and get it to her all at once.

Among the paperwork I routinely gather is seven months of pay stubs, seven months of bank statements, and two years of tax returns.  (There’s a reason for the seven but I won’t bore you.)  I also want copies of insurance policies, vehicle registrations, mortgage documents, and appraisals.  And then there are the bills and credit counseling certificates.  All of that is in routine cases.  Special cases will call for even more documentation.  I’ll ask questions about that information, ask for more information, and then, just before filing a case, ask for updated information, especially bank accounts and paystubs.   All that, in every single case, and more in cases involving businesses or other complications.

It’s not easy to put all that together.  (Well, there may be a few extraordinarily organized people for whom it’s not difficult, but I’m talking normal humans here.  I think every bankruptcy lawyer out there recognizes that.  We struggle with organizing that information, storing it, and retrieving it, too, so we know it takes time and effort.  It will be worth the time and effort, though, and it will be easier and ultimately quicker for you if you take the time to do it all, at once, and get it done.

My office procedures are designed to encourage that approach, and avoid what a friend of mine calls the “dump and run.”  That’s where someone brings in a pile of paper (usually in a plastic grocery bag), dumps it on the receptionist’s desk, and runs away.  (They need to run away, too, because we’re probably trying to chase them down to give it back.)  Ultimately, it not only costs me time and effort to go through that sort of stuff, but it costs the client, too–in repeated trips to my office for missing information, in creditor harrassment because the case doesn’t get filed on time, maybe even in repeating credit counseling because the certificate expires while all this is going on.  Not to mention the fact that the chances of overlooking something of importance multiplies exponentially when information comes in piecemeal.

So, if you’re thinking of filing a bankruptcy, or even planning a filing, plan on devoting some time to the preparation of your case.  You’ll get it back, and more, when your case is successfully concluded.