@Anonymous wrote:
Hi,
I filed for bankruptcy several months ago. Through the whole process, I told my lawyer I wanted to reaffirm my car loan. My lawyer mentioned reaffirming, his secretary/clerk mentioned reaffirming, the trustee asked if I was going to affirm. I said yes. At every point my lawyer said reaffirming was later. Now I've got a discharge and my car loan is not reaffirmed. I find out that the reaffirmation was supposed to have happened ages ago. I had no idea. The way they talked about it I thought it was after the discharge.
The lawyer is difficult to get ahold of. He has risked the success of my bankruptcy case several times by filing incomplete paperwork, not filing things I'd sent to him, etc. Do you have any advice? Who do I talk to next? I called the lawyer and he told me he'd call me back after he reviewed the case. That was 45 minutes ago. My credit union (with the car loan) said they can't tell me anything about anything because that would be giving legal advice.
If I paid off the car loan right now (with another loan) would that solve it?
Thanks so much for any help. I thought bankruptcy was going to take a load off my shoulders but it's been constant difficulty and stress for months, mostly because of my attorney.
First of all, welcome to MyFico forums!
Secondly, dishonest attorney like yours really tick me off. IN my 2010 BK7 my attorney did the same thing - I wanted to reaffirm my mortgage, attorney argued against it & reluctantly agreed. All during the process it was "yes, your mortgage will be reaffirmed", but what he didn't tell me & what your attorney didn't tell you is that to reaffirm the lender has to send a reaffirmation agreement & it has to be signed by your attorney, you, the court and the lender, and then recorded by the court in your BK case.
Some are advising you to just continue to pay on time and keep the car. That is usually good advice as when the debt is discharged in BK you are no longer personally liable for it, if you have problems in the future and fall behind on payments all they can do is take the car. If reafirmed, they can take the car and make you pay any shortage over what they sell the car for and what you owe.
BUT most credit unions will not allow that, if you do not reaffirm the loan they will repossess even if you have never been late. That's because most credit unions put a clause in the loan docs that if you file BK you are automatically in default even if always paid on time.
The credit union should be able to answer one question that is not "legaL advice": If you continue to make all payments on time will they let you keep the car?
If the answer is "Yes", then just keep paying & keep the car.
If the answer is "No" then you need to consider - is the value of the car less than the loan balance? (you can check the car value at kbb.com, Kelly Blue Book)
If the car is worth less than what you owe you need to consider letting them repo the car and get another one.
If the car is worth more than what you owe, and/or you really, really want to keep it then yes, getting a new loan & pay the current loan in full that would solve the problem. But, just out of BK you'll probably pay much higher interest rate.
Good luck
