Legal Question in Bankruptcy in California

Bankruptcy

We waited for 2 months for a lawyer to file our bankruptcy and he never did it, so the day before our house was sold in foreclosure a gentlemen who knew how to file the paperwork went down to the court and filed it for us and of course charged us ($1,000.00) he never gave us copies of the paperwork so I went to the court and they said that today 10/25/07 was our cut off date to turn in the schedules that he never filled out and we had no idea, I spoke with a supervisor in the bankruptcy office and said I had to be at the court first thing in the morning and file a letter or form stating what we wanted to do becuse we wanted to file a Chapter 7 jointly with my husband and this man filed a chapter 13 only in my husbands name and told us we would have to do the same thing in about a month and pay him again, and we cannot aford that so I desided to try and do this myself, but I have no idea what form or letter I am supposed to file tomorrow becuase of course she could not give me more info, please help in letting me know what is going to happen and what I need to do to get this converted to a Chapter 7, thanks


Asked on 10/25/07, 11:01 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Brian Whitaker Lifeline Legal, LLP

Re: Bankruptcy

Since you wish to be in a Chapter 7, I assume it is your intention to surrender the house, and that filing a BK prior to the sale was just to buy some extra time before having to vacate.

When you file a "bare bones" BK (Petition only to get a case number) you have 15 days to file the rest of the Schedules. Most courts do not dismiss the case on day 16, so you probably have a few more days to get those in.

However, you'll have to pay someone the full fees to prepare all those schedules, and then you'll have to pay to convert the case to Ch7 and amend the Petition to add a joint debtor. It seems to me that it might just be cheaper and less stressful to let the current case dismiss, and file a joint Chapter 7 where everything is done correctly. Also, there's a good chance that the Ch7 would be filed before the postponed Trustee's sale which would postpone it again.

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Answered on 10/27/07, 12:39 pm


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