topic Re: filing joint or individually in Bankruptcy

filing joint or individually

Anonymous — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 23:45:21 GMT

I am seriously considering bankruptcy. However, I have two questions. First, I consulted an attorney in my area who specializes in bankruptcy approx. 2 1/2 yrs. ago. I was planning on filing for bankruptcy by myself, but he advised me not to. Because the debt was accumulated during the marriage, he said that the creditors could go after my husband. I am primary on the accounts and the only one who signed the applications, on some he is only an authorized user, who by the way doesn't really use them. Unfortunately, I decided to go home and take out a second on our home. Back then we were staying afloat by using credit to get by,so when we took out money to pay off these credit cards, our situation only got worse. Now we are $60,000 in credit card debts plus a $100,000 2nd on our home. My dilemma is that we got our 2nd on a 30/5, 30 year loan due in 5. With all the mess going on in the real estate market, I don't think we are going to be able to that loan refinanced. We have a balance on our 1st of $311,000. A home sold in our area for $387,000 about 2 months ago. I seriously doubt that we will gain any equity in our home any time soon. I'm wondering how accurate the info from the attorney really is. Also, my husband's dad just passed last month. His mom added my husband and his brother as account holders on all of her bank accounts. She has approx. $400,000 total. These purpose for adding them to her account is so that they can help her do online banking, write out checks, go to the bank and do transactions for her. My husband and his brother have never contributed a single penny to these accounts, and of course there's a paper trail of the origination of all the funds. I'm wondering how this will hurt us, if we decide to go through with bankruptcy. As you can imagine I am desperate and can really use some input. Please, if anyone can help direct me, I'd really appreciate it. By the way I live in California, I don't know if that will make a difference or not.

Re: filing joint or individually

granny031350 — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 00:16:20 GMT

California is community property state so filing jointly is encouraged as your attorney stated. If your husband can prove that the money in his mother's account is not his, then you should be able to get that excluded. As to your mortgage, you might be able to do a loan modification with your mortgage holder but definitely go talk to that BK attorney again. GL

Re: filing joint or individually

Anonymous — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 01:59:13 GMT

Thank you, I really appreciate your advice. We can definitely prove that the money was there long before my husband and brother-in-law were added to the accounts, and that it came from my in-laws income since much of it was directly deposited into their account. For the moment my husband has opted to hold off on filing for bk. I think he's hoping that our situation will improve. We can only try to get out of our current situation one step at a time. I hope that our situation improves rather than worsens, but we'll just have to wait and see. Once again thank you for your response.