Legal Question in Bankruptcy in Illinois

I really do not know if you can help with this problem, but thought I would give it a shot. My husband and I hired a bankruptcy attorney to help us file bankruptcy, because my husband lost his business and two incomes became one. First, we live in Kane County and we were set to go to Mchenry County for bankruptcy court, when we asked the attorney why it was in Mchenry, when we live in Kane he told us he did not know. Okay we go in front of the assigned bankruptcy trustee, he asks us questions, and we answer them to the best of our ability. We had previously had our home appraised by a realtor and she told us our home was valued at certain value, because the housing market was down, we gave that figure to the trustee and he decided he would have his own appraiser come out and appraise our home which was fine we had nothing to hide, we were only going by the number that the appraiser that we hired gave us. We had never experienced this before so we thought this was how it worked. We left the bankruptcy court with our attorney and he told us that we did not have to make the court appearance coming up because it would just be the debtors there. In addition, he assured us our home was protected and our primary car. Well to our amazement, we received a call from a realtor two weeks letter saying he wanted to come and measure our home, naturally our question was why, he responded with your house is being put on the market. Shock and upset we tried to contact the attorney Charles stahl jr. left several messages on several different occasions, with no success, he would not return our calls or answer any of our messages. Then we attempted to call the trustee from the bankruptcy court and he refuse to speak to us. All we wanted was answers on why our home was being sold. We are not behind in our mortgage, taxes and there is no lien on our home so we could not under stand why and how this could be done. We attempted several more times to reach our attorney as after a week and a half he finally called back. To our surprise, he had spoken to the trustee and the trustee told him if we gave him 26,000.00 he would not put our house on the market. Well our attorney never told us he had spoken to the trustee and until that day and come to find out, he never went to court on our behalf and had told us we did not have to go. We asked why he had not called and advised us of his conversation with the trustee and his response was, he had never heard of such a thing so he felt no need to relay the message. First, we paid the attorney in full, second if we had 26,000.00 dollars we would not have needed to file bankruptcy and third what is the 26,000.00 for. No one wants to explain to us what going on. We are living barely by check to check and the trustee wants to take the only place we have to live and put us on the streets. come to find out an associate of ours that knows the trustee informed us that the trustee Daniel Donohue did not like our attorney and felt he was playing games with him, so he was going to show us how they play games. We trusted our attorney to represent us and help us to understand the procedures of filing bankruptcy and he betrayed us and took our money and did nothing for us, but put us in a worst way. In addition, because a trustee does not like someone he puts them out of their home and can call himself a fair man. Who governs the bankruptcy trustees, how are they allowed to get away with this? Now we have a for Sale sign in our yard and have no idea what our faith is. In addition, the trustee is still saying if we give him between 26,000.00-40,000.00 dollars, he will take our house off the market. What is this money for? We do not have this type of money. I know this is a matter you may not be able to help with, but maybe you can direct me to someone that can. I have been so stressed and depressed I do not know what to do.

Thank you for your time

Sincerely

Donna Harper

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