Transcript:
Hello! this is Jeff Kelly, and in this podcast today I’m going to talk a little bit about How to fight a creditor lawsuit.
So, In Georgia, consumers have the right to fight back against creditor lawsuits. In my experience, the people who I have seen have the most successful outcomes are victims of identity theft. Before I get into it, I wanna go something real quick. A lot of people will call me and say “Why in the world am I getting a letter from you just because I’m being sued?”
Well, the answer is. I am a bankruptcy attorney and in my law practice, we send out a ton of direct mail advertisements to people who are getting sued. Often times, our letters will get to people before the sheriff will serve the lawsuit, particularly during this corona time. A lot of sheriff officers are being delayed for obvious reasons and our letter gets there first. So people understandably wanna know when they’re gonna get the information. Usually is about a week or two after our letter hits, but the sheriff is coming he will serve you with a complaint. And it’s very important to make note of the date you are served of the complaint because you have 30 days to respond to it. If you don’t respond, you’re gonna end up with a default judgment against you and that is very very bad because you could lose a lot of important rights.
So, what you do if you’ve got a creditor lawsuit against you and you want to fight it? Well, if we’re talking about a significant amount of money you really need to hire an attorney. I mean it’s kind of crazy to walk into a court of law if you don’t know what you’re doing. But I do understand if it is a small amount of money there are some cases where the amount of money that’s state at stake might be less than what you would pay an attorney.
So, I get it. In Georgia, you have the right to represent yourself without an attorney. I don’t recommend this but I get it. So, you wanna make sure that you respond to the lawsuit within 30 days of you being served. You can go on Google and you can type in “How do I respond to a creditor lawsuit?”. Usually, a small amount are going to be in magistrate court, “How do I respond to magistrate court lawsuit?”. The form is not super complicated, you can possibly do it all in one page. You wanna style the top part just like the complaint that you’ve been served, You’re going to want to, you know, right at the top answer that this is your answer to the complaint.
If you’re a victim of identity theft, you’re probably going to want to say something along the lines of “I am not liable for the debt as alleged in the complaint, I’ve never had a contract with the defendant. Ever! I’d like to have a hearing before the judge”. Something that simple should be enough to get you a hearing. Now, if you do get a hearing before the judge, you’re gonna get notified by mail. And you better show up at the hearing date. Because if you don’t, you know, judges are very powerful people if they wanted to, and I doubt they would do this very often, but
Hello, this is Jeff Kelly, and today is June 25th, 2020. And the title of today’s podcast is Don’t Let Yourself Get Smacked by the Tidal Wave. It is no secret that a tidal wave of vanquishes are coming down the pipe soon. Over 40 million Americans have lost their jobs due through no fault of their own because of this blasted, COVID 19 government four shutdown of our economy. What’s going to drive this tidal wave of bankruptcies is going to be a tidal wave of creditor lawsuits.
So for almost five months, creditors in Georgia have not been able to get orders on the collection lawsuits they filed.
And the deadline has been extended and been extended. And currently it’s going to be extended until about mid July. And this lack of enforcement has created a false sense of security for a lot of people. I, I bet there’s tons of consumers who have just completely forgotten about the lawsuit with all the strange stuff that’s been going on in the world. This is probably not top of mind and this false sense of security is about to get blown away. Once courts are allowed to operate at full capacity in mid July.
So along with the tidal wave, a predictable nightmare is coming for many consumers in Georgia after the courts reopen. Some person is going to get their wages garnished out of the blue. They are going to see twenty five percent of their paycheck disappear. So what does this look like in real life? Someone who is expecting to see 500 hours in their paycheck is only going to get about three seventy five. Someone who has a few thousand dollars in their checking account could potentially see it all disappear depending on the amount of the debt.
What’s this going to lead to?
Rent payments won’t be able to get made. Mortgage payments will not be able to get made. Car payments will not be able to get made. Financial disaster. And I imagine that many people are going to procrastinate and they’re going to be calling us in late July. And I hope this doesn’t happen, but it is possible that they may hear these awful words. I’m so sorry. We’re fully booked out. And I imagine you’re going to hear people say, look, I’m desperate.
Your five months of collection lawsuits are going to hit all at once. We’re not going to be able to help everybody. And I doubt I think there’s gonna be a major shortage of bankruptcy attorneys for the first couple of months. So don’t wait until after the nightmare hits, the tidal wave hits. You know who you are.
You know, if you’re in financial trouble, you know, if you’ve got stuff hanging over your head. Take care of business. Call me today. It is a free consultation. 770-881-8449. Let’s get the ball rolling before everything hit you. Don’t wait until afterwards. It could really compound your headache. So almost every bankruptcy firm that I know of has has been forced to lay off at least half their staff.
So, I mean, not only is there going to be this big, huge tidal wave of collection losses coming, but most bankruptcy firms are downsized and they’re going to stay downsized until things start coming back. Most firms are either going to be in pay off the debt or, you know, replenish the savings mode. There’s not going to be a huge amount of capacity. So it’s just going to compound the problem. So, again, call me today.
It doesn’t cost you anything to explore your options. It takes time to get properly ready for a bankruptcy case. We need to review your paycheck stub. We need to look at your assets. We’re going to tell you if bankruptcy is not a right fit for you.
For some people, it may not be. But we need time to evaluate. So, again, take action. Don’t wait. You know, you are. You need to call me. 770-881-8449. Thank you.
Hello, this is Jeff Kelly. And in this podcast today, I’m going to talk about what happens to your credit score after bankruptcy. Am I doomed? For many years. What does my future look like? Will I ever be able to buy a new car at a decent interest rate? Will I ever be able to buy that house that I’ve always dreamed of? Is my financial future ruined forever as a bankruptcy attorney who has practiced in this area since 1998?
I have heard questions like these hundreds of times. And the answer might shock you. The answer is this. Most people do recover within about two years, one to two years of filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
How can that possibly be? You may say, well, first of all, usually by the time the clients come meet with me, the damage has already been done. Most potential clients have stopped paying credit cards. Many months ago, had cars repossessed. Been sued by creditors. Had wages garnished or had their house foreclosed.
Any of these will put a major hit to your credit rating. For most people considering bankruptcy, like I said, the damage is already there. So the question is, what do we want to do going forward? Do you ever get a knot in your stomach when you think about your credit score?
David, just feel sick to your stomach thinking about all that debt and the interest and late fees and just mess that’s hanging over you and it’s not going anywhere. Well, Chapter 7 might help make that pain go away. So the question is, how do we clean it up and how do we how do we clean up the mess from the past and move forward with a better future?
Well, step one is we get the case filed. We stop the immediate pressure from the creditors. You know, as soon as we get the case filed, the phone calls have to stop the lawsuits, stop the harassing letters, stop.
Everything stops. And that’s a wonderful that’s a wonderful, peaceful feeling. And then the second, an important step is through the bankruptcy. We’re going to eliminate all of your debt. So this underlying problem is gone. It’s not coming back on you again. You don’t have to worry about it. And that’s where most bankruptcy attorneys will leave it. And I’m not saying it’s a terrible thing. That’s just the traditional way it’s done. You come in, you meet with the bankers attorney, you get your debts wiped out, you’re out the door.
Well, we do something a little different. We we take it a step further. And there’s a course called Fresh Start for Life.
And in this course, a good friend of mine named Don Golden will teach you how you can rebuild your credit after filing bankruptcy.
Don says that most people can get to a 720 credit score within 12 to 24 months.
And that’s really important because if you go out and get a car loan with a super high interest rate or, you know,
Hello, this is Jeff Kelly and Today is June the 15th 2020. And today I want to talk about how to protect yourself from theft in a chapter 13 with NDC.org.
Every active chapter 13 debtor should open an account with NDC.org, the cost is free, but the information you see could be worth a lot of money and save you from theft. Having an account with NDC.org will allow you to see every single proof of claim that has been filed in your bankruptcy case and it will also allow you to verify that your chapter 13 payments are being received by the trustee.
Years ago I had a client whose employer took money from her paycheck, but never sent it into the trustee. We caught the error and had to sue the employer to get the money paid. Having an account with NDC.org allows you to catch stuff like this. Proof of claim is a form signed under oath, with supporting documentation that a creditor must file in a bankruptcy case in order to get paid. The proof of claim will tell the trustee the type of claim and the amount owed.
If a creditor fails to file before the deadline in your case, they won’t get paid anything. For example, let’s say you had a car repossessed a few years ago, and owe the car creditor $10,000. If they fail to file a proof of claim on time, you will not have to pay that $10,000.
Let’s change up the facts a little bit. Let’s say you owe the IRS $10,000 of tax credit that we cannot eliminate in bankruptcy. If they don’t file a claim, we may want to file one on their behalf to make sure they get paid in your case. While it is rare, sometimes a creditor will accidentally file a claim in the wrong place. In theory, if no one ever notices a wrong claim, could get paid and cost you a lot of money.
In my bankruptcy firm, we review every single claim filed in our clients case. At the same time, we also encourage all of my clients to open an account with NDC.org and double-check as well. The fact that many bankruptcy claims get sold can create a lot of confusion for clients, and they can be solved while your case is going on. So you may look online and see the claim of a holder that you’ve never heard of before. If this happens, it’s a good idea to call us and we’ll pull the proof of claim for you and make sure that it’s accurate.
If an inaccurate claim is discovered, we will first contact the person that filed it and notify them of their error. If the offending filer ignores us, which usually happens most of the time. We will then file what’s called an objection to the proof of claim, the debtor will then need to attend the hearing with us testify to the judge that this claim is bogus.
NDC.org states that you could open up an account online in less than five minutes. All you need to set up your account is your full legal name, your bankruptcy case number, the last four digits of your social security n
Hello, this is Jeff Kelly, and today is June the 8th, 2020 and today we’re going to talk about, can I buy a car while I’m in an active Chapter 13 bankruptcy case. Short answer? Yes, you can, but buying a car while you’re in an active Chapter 13, while it’s possible, it’s extremely difficult because most lenders are not willing to go through the process of waiting for the court to approve a post-petition car loan. Finding a lender who’s willing to work with you while you’re in an active Chapter 13 case is the biggest challenge. However, I have seen some clients pull it off successfully. It’s important to note, no one can incur any new debt in an active Chapter 13 case without permission from the court. Now, of course, emergency medical debt, that’s an exception to this rule, but as a general rule, no new debt without permission from the bankruptcy court, or you can get in a lot of trouble.
To obtain permission from the court, we had to set it down for a hearing. We have to notify all the creditors in your case what our intentions are, that we want to buy a new car. At the hearing, the trustee is going to have some questions and may or may not oppose your request to purchase a new car. Your bankruptcy attorney will present your case and then the bankruptcy judge will decide whether or not she wants to sign an order allowing it. Typically, this process takes anywhere between 30 to 45 days. It is a slow process. It is not overnight. If you truly don’t have an alternative source of transportation and the proposed payment interest rate and the amount to be incurred are reasonable, most bankruptcy courts are going to approve the purchase of your new car.
Now, if you’re wanting to get a new car, just because you’re sick and tired of the old one, it’s not fashionable anymore, forget it. You’re in bankruptcy. The court is not going to allow you to purchase a new car for that reason. You’ve got to have an acceptable reason to purchase a new car in an active Chapter 13 case. “My old car won’t run anymore and I need to get back and forth to work”. That’s a good reason. “I want a new car. I’m sick and tired of this old one. It smells”. That’s a bad reason. If you have an extra car listed in your bankruptcy case, a trustee’s going to ask, “why do you need a new one?” So, for example, we have clients all the time, some interesting clients will have three, four and five cars. Those clients, the trustee is going to approve the purchase of a new vehicle, unless there’s some sort of explanation that, “hey, this extra car that we had listed in the case, it no longer runs”.
So I think it’s a good idea to review schedule B and if you have some cars break down, since your case was originally filed, I think it’s a good idea to amend your petition to reflect the new status of those old vehicles. I want to talk real quick about the myth of the “buy here, pay here”. So I have clients all the time say, “well, a ‘buy here pay here’ doesn’t count because that’s what the ‘buy here pay here’ auto salesman told me.” “It doesn’t count because they don’t care about bankruptcy.” “It doesn’t count because well, they don’t report on your credit.” No, no, no. All that is wrong, wrong. The owner of the “buy here pay here” is wrong. You’ve got to have court permission to obtain new consumer debt. It doesn’t matter that they don’t report. It doesn’t matter what the owner of the car lot says.
Hello, this is Jeff Kelly and in this podcast, I’m going to talk about why you are receiving this letter about someone who’s trying to sue you. Well, one of our big sources for potential clients is a list of people who are getting sued. So one of the most common questions we get is, “Hey, this is my personal information; my name, my address, and the name of this creditor that you say is suing me. How did you get this information?” It’s all public record down at the courthouse. So what we do is we try to help people with Chapter 13 and Chapter 7 and we try to come up with plans to help people deal with all of their debts; the entire situation. Try to help get some relief from the stress of dealing with debt. Now another common question we get is, “Hey, I don’t recognize this name of this creditor that you say as suing me. So how do I know it’s true? Or I want some more details here. When am I going to get more detail?”
And usually within about a week of receiving our letter, the sheriff is going to come out to your house and the sheriff is going to serve you what’s called a complaint. Usually these complaints are anywhere between 20 and 30 pages and all the details are going to be in that complaint. Who purchased the debt — A lot of people don’t realize this, but debts get bought and sold a lot by various creditor collection companies. For example, usually if somebody falls behind on credit card debt, typically about six months after they fall behind, the credit card company is going to sell that debt to a debt collector. The debt collector will usually buy it for 5 cents on the dollar. The way the debt collector makes money is they sue you and garnish you and they collect a hundred cents on the dollar. So it’s a very, very profitable industry.
So if you don’t recognize the name of the collection company, that’s probably why. Now, one way you might be able to connect the dots, if you don’t feel comfortable waiting a week for the sheriff to come serve you the complaint is, you can go to annualcreditreport.com and once a year you are entitled to download a free copy of your credit report. Well oftentimes, the name of the debt collection company will be on the credit report and oftentimes, it will show the original creditor as well. So that might help you make some sense of it.
Now, another objection that we often get is people will say, “Hey, this debt that you say I owe, it’s being taken care of by the debt settlement company. I’ve paying them this super high monthly payment for the past year. What’s going on here?” Well, I know this is very upsetting for a lot of people to learn, but there’s a lot of debt settlement companies out there that are complete crooks. They take your money and they don’t pay the creditor what they say they’re going to pay the creditor, and debt settlement companies cannot protect you from lawsuits. The creditors are not bound by this. So the collection companies just end up filing a lawsuit against you at some point and they’re going to try hard to collect. And it’s super important that you don’t ignore the problem because if you just ignore the problem, they’re going to get a default judgment against you. And with that default judgment, they’re either going to garnish 25% of your check until the debt’s paid. Or a lot of people don’t realize this as well, they can come after any checking account that has your name on it; any checking accou
Do-I-qualify-for-bankruptcy
Hello, this is Jeff Kelly, and today is May the 25th, 2020 Memorial day. Today’s topic is, do I qualify for bankruptcy? This is probably one of the most common questions we get. The short answer is that almost everyone is going to qualify for some type of bankruptcy relief. But as we get into this, it’s important to understand the different types of bankruptcy. So the first one is one people are usually most interested in, that’s Chapter 7, where you wipe out all your debts. Many people like to refer to Chapter 7 as the fresh start provision or the bankruptcy code. To qualify for Chapter 7, you got to have no money left at the end of your budget after you pay all your monthly living expenses. In other words, at the end of every month, you are on zero. In addition, you got to pass what’s called the means test. To pass the means test, your family must have a monthly income that is lower than the average family of your size in your region as determined by the IRS. These numbers are updated every quarter. As of today, the means test limit for a family size of two, just to give you an example, in the North Georgia area, is $65,007 a year.
So in other words, let’s say you got a family size of two and you’re making a hundred grand a year. You are way over the limit of $65,007. You’re probably not going to qualify for a Chapter 7. However, there are some deductions we get; health insurance, child support, alimony. So some of the stuff may come into play. The bottom line is you need to meet with an attorney and you need to have an attorney who understands how the means test works to give you an idea of whether you qualify or not.
Now, if someone is a good bit over the limit, Chapter 13 is probably going to be the better option. Now let’s talk about Chapter 13. Chapter 13 is often referred to as the “catch your breath” provision of the bankruptcy code. In chapter 13, unsecured debt can be eliminated just like it can in Chapter 7, but it’s over a longer period of time. Chapter 13 is a great tool for catching up arrears on house payments, catching up past due car payments and stopping garnishments. So how much do you have to pay back in a Chapter 13? That’s largely going to depend on how far over the means test you are. Another thing we need to look at that I skipped over a little bit too fast is assets. If you’ve got an asset that’s worth a lot of money that I cannot protect with bankruptcy exemptions, then you don’t want to file Chapter 7 or they’re going to take it. So let me give you an example there.
Married couple can exempt $43,000 equity in a house. Let’s say you’ve got a $100,000 house that’s paid for. You don’t want to file Chapter 7. Do you qualify for Chapter 7? Could you do it? Yes, you could, but they’re going to sell your house, they’re going to pay your exemption amount, they’re going to take the difference and apply it towards your debts. So sometimes people in those situations will also try to make a Chapter 13 work, if at all possible. So again, back to the means test, you know, when you get to the end of the means test, there is a number and you take that number and you multiply it by 60, and that’s the amount you’re going to pay in a Chapter 13 to your unsecured creditors.
Is it possible to have too much debt to qualify for Chapter 7? And the answer is no. You can’t have too much debt and file a Chapter 7 or wipe it all out. The amount of debt is not an issue, but in the Chapter 13, it is an issue. So currently the debt limit for your unsecured debt, credit cards, medical bills, things like that in Chapte
Will filing bankruptcy ruin your credit? Hello, my name is Jeff Kelly. I’m a bankruptcy attorney. I’ve been practicing for about 22 years now. And in today’s podcast, I’m going to answer that question. Well, I can just tell you right out of the gate, my goal as a bankruptcy attorney, when I have a client come in and meet with me, when it comes to credit, my goal is to take any expectations that they have about credit and just beat them into the ground. I don’t want people to come into bankruptcy with false ideas. And there’s nothing worse than unmet expectations. So, I tell people, “look, we are about to take a big giant wrecking ball and it’s going to go clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk! Boom, to your credit when you file.”
But the funny thing is, the people who I meet with, who seem to be most concerned about their credit are people who have already had their credit ruined by garnishments and judgments and I have a client – I’ve had potential clients out – I just can’t do it. I just can’t afford to wreck my credit and I’m looking at it at their credit report and I’m like, “you’ve got to be kidding me. Your score is 550, you have 10 judgments against you. You’re currently being garnished. They’re taking 25% of your income.” So I think what’s going on is a lot of people – it’s very common for people to make decisions that are just based on emotion. And when it comes to whether to file or not to file bankruptcy, emotion really has to go out the window and we’ve got to look at numbers and we’ve got to think logically here. So, if somebody is in a situation where they can avoid bankruptcy altogether and take care of their debts in a reasonable fashion, by all means do it.
But what if your house is at stake? What if they’re about to foreclose on you? No way should you delay filing. You’ve got to save your house. You can rebuild your credit back later. If your car’s about to get repossessed and you’re not going to be able to get back and forth to work, maybe you might even lose your job, file Chapter 13, save the car. There’s a lot — In Georgia, they can garnish up to 25% of your paycheck. I am shocked and stunned at how many people I see who will be garnished for years before they finally come in and meet with me. A lot of people think that some judgment’s just going to eventually disappear and just fall away and sometimes it does happen, but they can renew those judgments. It doesn’t cost much at all. And so, I’ve had clients come in and they’re like, “This debt is from 15 years ago, it can’t be legal.” Well, the reason it’s legal is because they got a judgment and they’ve been renewing it every single time it came up.
So, another common objection I get of why people just don’t want to file bankruptcy is because they’re worried they’re never going to be able to buy a new car. And it’s just not true. People buy cars all the time after they come out of Chapter 7 and Chapter 13. And the reason that someone can file a bankruptcy file a Chapter 7, 90 days later get a discharge and then go buy a new car, the reason people can do that is because their credit slate has been wiped clean. They’re starting over from scratch. The smart car companies know that you can only file a Chapter 7 once every eight years. So they’ve got eight years to potentially take it out of you. They’re smart. They know that. Some clients will come to me and say, “Look, Jeff, you’re telling me that this wrecks my credit? Well, how come my friend claims that they
Hello, this is Georgia bankruptcy attorney, Jeff Kelly and today is May the 11th, 2020. Today I would like to talk about how an ex can sneak up on you and put stinky shoe-shoe on your Chapter, 13 bankruptcy case. Is there anything worse than some hated ex coming back into your life? No, there’s not, but in some bankruptcy cases, it happens. You know that yuck feeling that you get when you hear that voice inside your head say, “Oh no. Now I have to deal with – fill in the blank.” It makes my stomach hurt when I give people the bad news. The number one way that an ex can cause problems in your Chapter 13 bankruptcy case is when they have co-signed on a car with you. Now, in most Chapter 13 cases, we are able to lower interest rates on automobile debt down to around 6% ish.
This feature of Chapter 13 is awesome and is particularly wonderful when you have an interest rate of 30% and we’re knocking it down to 6%. What a relief, right? But all this can go out the window, if you have an ex that was involved in the purchase of your car. If an ex is co-signed on the car with you, this is super problematic because if we try to lower the contract interest rate, the creditor will be able to sue the ex for the eliminated portion of the debt. As you can imagine, they will scream and holler to the hilltops. To protect any co-signer from being pursued by a creditor, we can take advantage of the co-sign and protection provision of the bankruptcy code as long as we pay the full contract amount in the Chapter 13 plan. Ugh! Can you imagine trying to pay 30% compound interest in the Chapter 13 plan? That makes the payments go up a lot. It could, in some cases, double somebody’s payments. So that stinks. It doesn’t matter who signed first or who signed second. People always want to point that out to me. “Well, I signed second and I didn’t sign first.” It doesn’t matter. If two people signed it, then two people who can get pursued for 100% of the debt by the creditor. A lot of times people will say, “Well, hey, this car or whatever, the divorce judge said that I had to pay it a 100%. So it’s all on me. It’s not on them.”
No, no, no, no. That doesn’t affect a creditor’s rights. That just means that your ex could sue you if you don’t indemnify them if that’s what the divorce judge ordered. A second, very common way than an ex sneaks on you in your Chapter 13 bankruptcy case, is income taxes. When you sign a joint tax return, you are jointly liable for the taxes. The most common case of this happening is when the ex is self-employed and some shady tax preparer, not a CPA, files the tax returns. I have seen Chapter 13 cases where we get the case filed and the client has a reasonable monthly payment amount. Then a few months later, after the case is filed, the Internal Revenue swoops down from nowhere and files a claim for a $100,000.
This could potentially increase the client’s Chapter 13 payment by an extra $1,793 per month. How can you avoid these nightmare exes from hell scenarios? And the answer, never sign a joint tax return and never co-sign for any person’s car and never ask anyone to co-sign for you. So when the car salesman says, “All you need to do is get your boyfriend or your girlfriend to sign with you and we have a deal.” Run away, run away, run away as fast as you can. If you’ve got any questions, send me an email
[email protected] or check out my main website www.kellycanhelp.com or you can give us a call at (770) 881-8449. Thank you f
Transcript:
Hello, this is Jeff Kelly and in this podcast today I want to answer the question, how do you file Chapter 7 and still keep your stuff that you owe money on? And the answer is reaffirmation agreements. So let’s go through some hypotheticals. Let’s say you’ve got somebody, they’ve got a 2010 Honda Accord and they owe about $10,000 on it, payment’s about $350 a month. Interest rate is 12% and they also have $50,000 credit cards and then another $50,000 in medical. What’s going to happen? Well, in a Chapter 7 situation, assuming they qualify, the credit card debt is going to be wiped out, eliminated, gone. Medical debt’s going to be wiped out, eliminated, gone. Why? Because those are unsecured debts. Now, let’s talk about the car. What’s going to happen with that? Could the person in this hypothetical surrender the car to the creditor and wipe out the debt?
Absolutely they could, but if they want to keep it and they’re going to have to keep making the payments and they’re going to have to sign something called a reaffirmation agreement. A reaffirmation agreement is a contract between you and the creditor and basically it says this, “Hey Honda Accord creditor, I could wipe you out, but I’m going to give up all of my Chapter 7 rights and we’re going to treat this debt and treat this debt only as if we have never filed.” Now personally, I’ll be honest with you, I don’t like reaffirmation agreements; I’m extremely cautious about reaffirmation agreements. Once you sign that reaffirmation agreement, you have 60 days to change your mind if the car ends up being a clunker. But, the danger with reaffirmations is this: you can only file Chapter 7 once every eight years. So what happens if you sign a reaffirmation agreement on this car and couple years down the road, the car goes ca-plunk, but you still owe thousands of dollars on it.
Well guess what? You’re going to pay back thousands of dollars on it. You can only file Chapter 7 once every eight years. So you have to be extremely careful about signing a reaffirmation agreement. So for my clients, we’re going to grill you and we’re going to ask you over and over, are you sure you want to reaffirm this car? Are you positive you want to reaffirm this car? Now, what happens if you’ve got some outrageous interest rate, let’s say 35%. There is no way on planet earth we’re going to sign a reaffirmation agreement on that. That is a rip-off. You are just getting gouged. It would not be wise for you to sign a reaffirmation agreement on something like a super high-interest rate like that. Is it possible that a creditor will negotiate and bring the interest rate down? Normally I would tell you that that’s just never going to happen, but it actually did this past week. I did have a creditor that was amazingly reasonable and actually came down from 35% to 12% on this particular client’s car. Honestly, I was shocked. We routinely tell car creditors all the time, forget it, eat, steal, you’re going to have to take the car back because we’re not doing 35% and most of the time they do take it, but this creditor did not.
Now I want to talk about four wheelers for a little bit. Man, the four wheeler. Can you file Chapter 7, wipe out all your debts and keep your four wheeler? It depends; how much is that monthly payment? Is
