Legal Question in Bankruptcy in Virginia

Re: Will Bankruptcy Ruin Me For Life? How Does New Legislation Affect Me?

If you are unemployed and expect to stay that way for any appreciable time, bankruptcy may be the only reasonable route for you to take. Unless you win the lottery, of course, and I wouldn't count on that.

Bankruptcy will stay on your credit report for ten years but that does not necessarily mean you will have no credit during that time.

Future creditors will look at two things: your payment history after bankruptcy and your ability to pay, i.e., income versus living expenses.

Debt consolidation is all well and good for some circumstances but $50,000 for most people is a bit too much to consolidate. For something that high, if you tried to do a 100% payback in Chapter 13 bankruptcy your payment would be almost $1,000 a month--if you stretched Chapter 13 to its maximum length of five years.

You should indeed speak to a lawyer--yesterday if not sooner.

As to how the bankruptcy "reform" (and I use the term "reform" extremely loosely--DEform would probably be a better term) will affect you, I couldn't know without a detailed consultation AND without knowing exactly what Congress is going to impose on us. Judging from the news reports most people wouldn't want to know the answer to that question.

If you would like detailed information as to how bankruptcy works, you could go to my website, which I am vain enough to think is quite informative, at:

http://www.regencylegalclinic.com/

Once there, go to the "Bankruptcy Facts" page.

There are a lot of good resources on the web, as well as our page, to answer your detailed questions. Try a search using "Chapter 7" or "Chapter 13" to find some of them.

Good luck to you!