Question about cards involved in Ch. 7

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

Long time lurker, first time poster. I, with the assistance of my attorney, filed a chapter 7 yesterday afternoon. I'm not proud of it (quite embaressed, actually) but it was obvious that it needed to happen so it's already been a big burden lifted off my chest. My attorney listed all of my credit cards (both ones that are open and ones that have been closed for a long time) on my petition even though the vast majority of them have a $0 balance and no cards have any deragatory marks. He explained that it was his practice to do this in case any of the cards had old debt that had been charged off to collections (I'm sure that none of mine have had that happen).

I have two questions about this:

1) For the cards that are open but have a $0 balance, should I contact the bank(s) and proactively close the cards instead of having them closed as part of the bankruptcy. I don't know if there's any benefit to having the card show as closed by consumer request instead of closed IIB (or if it's too late to close the accounts myself since the paperwork was filed yesterday and a case number has been assigned). I emailed my attorney and he said he doesn't think it matter either way but I'm curious what everyone on here says. 

2) Will banks consider me as having burned them simply because the card was listed on the bankruptcy petition even if there was $0 due on the account and the accounts have no deragatory marks on them? Banks under that category include: AmEx, Capital One, Chase, Discover, Emery Federal Credit Union, HSBC, Hyundai Motor Financing, Kohl's store card (ran by Capital One), Nissan Motor Financing, PNC, Synchrony (Ebates and Amazon cards), Target, and US Bank.

For what it's worth, the only banks I'm truly burning are Bank of America ($12K), Barclay ($7K) Citi (Costco card; $4K), Marcus by Goldman Sachs ($8.5K).

Thanks in advance for your opinions, especially about the first question.

[MyDataMyChoice]

I filed a month ago....  I did NOT list any accounts with a 0.00 balance.  

Its too late once the petition goes in... they start the notification proccess.

[Anonymous]

@MyDataMyChoice - thanks for the quick reply. I know it's too late to remove them from the petition. Is there any benefit to calling the banks and closing the cards myself before they receive the notification of bankruptcy from the court?

[Jnbmom]

We filed 15+ years ago and were told to only include accounts with balances. Not sure if that has changed? 

[toi34]

I filed Chapter 7 back in December and only included the cards with balances. That did not matter, because the creditors listed ALL of my accounts with them as "0 balance, included in Bankruptcy petition" even though they were not.

I disputed these accounts with the comment "not included in bankruptcy," and they are reappearing with all of the positive payment history, but the notations now say "0 balance, closed by credit grantor." 

In the grand scheme of things I don't know if it matters or not, but it sorta feels like it does. Maybe one of the moderators can chime in and clarify?

[Anonymous]

Really hoping someone can also speak to my second question -- if a credit card that is already PIF is included in a bankruptcy petition, will that bank consider me as having burned them in bankruptcy?

[Anonymous]

What exactly is your concern about whether or not they consider you to have burned them in the BK even though it was a 0 balance?

Some banks exclude you from getting another account until you pay them back what you owe them. Which in your case would be $0. Even then all banks have a time line for when you can get back in no matter if you burned them or never even had an account with them.

So, for example amex it's going to be a very very long time till you get in with them even if you never had a card with them. Capital one is different, I've seen people who burned them who got in with them immediately.

Is there a specific card you're wondering about how long till you get back in with them?

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the quick reply! I was worried that some banks, if they consider themselves burned, would never extend credit again (regardless of if money was still owed to them or not).

[MyDataMyChoice]

don't worry about who you burned and how to get credit later...

worry about budgeting and saving $$$$$

[MyDataMyChoice]

can I ask what circumstances brought you to file for 32K
What was / is your income? did you loose you job? pending lawsuit? etc...?

Seems you had good credit scores... you could have consolidated or settled