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Most lenders will close the card if they see the BK, and they will see the BK during AR soft pulls.
Pay the card down and close it yourself and they may not see the BK since you closed the account. Makes it easier to app for a new card after BK discharge.
The others are right. You can't keep a card because you have to list every account you have - all credit cards, all assets, all liabilities including leases and collection accounts. You may not have seen the paperwork yet but it is very extensive. http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/completing-the-bankruptcy-forms
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-i-keep-credit-card-in-my-chapter-7-bankruptcy.html
As one of the posters mentioned above, the best thing to do is to close your zero balance credit cards before you file Bk. That way you will preserve the good history and the tradeline won't be marked with "included in bankrupcy". There are two good reasons to close the zero balance cards before Bk:
Everything has to be included in a Bankruptcy. There is no way to keep it out and if you hide it they will end up cancelling your bankruptcy on you.
The only way to keep it out is to pay it off and then close it, that way it won't be included, though that could look bad too as in how were you able to pay them but you can't pay others when you go and talk to a lawyer.
Just be careful about making payments totaling more than $600 to a single creditor, within 90 days of filing, as these payments can be reversed by the panel trustee as preferential payments. If that were to happen, the money would be re-distributed to the rest of your creditors, after a cut for the trustee, of course.
@Anonymous wrote:Just be careful about making payments totaling more than $600 to a single creditor, within 90 days of filing, as these payments can be reversed by the panel trustee as preferential payments. If that were to happen, the money would be re-distributed to the rest of your creditors, after a cut for the trustee, of course.
This too, I forgot about that. They will ding you if you try something like that. The Trustees don't like to see things like this. So if you want to keep them out you need to pay them off and wait at least 90 days before you file.
Actually the advice given isn't entirely accurate. You can safely pay down any card that has a balance of $599 and under within the 6 months before the bk filing without closing the card and hope the creditor doesn't close the card.
And you don't include cards, you include debt. If you don't have debt on a card at the time of the filing then you don't list it in your bankruptcy, which basically has the effect of not being included in your bankruptcy, yes, but you still have to pray the creditor simply doesn't close your card if they see the bankruptcy. However, if you have no debt, it's not likely they will be pulling your report via an account review.
It is extremely important to your credit score to try to have cards survive your bankruptcy.