Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today on This Needs to be Said. We are joined again by our friend, attorney Bob Doig, and he talks with us about bankruptcy. He has this page on his website called the ABCs of bankruptcy, so you have to go out and visit his site, and we’ll share that with you by the end of the interview. I actually have a question, Bob, so welcome back to This Needs to be Said. I have a question that’s not from that list right away because I’m curious. Are there ever any instances when you have to turn people away, you cannot do bankruptcy for them, you cannot file it for them?

Absolutely, of course there are, yeah. Yeah.

What are some of those instances?

Well, you know, I’ve had people come in and they want me to … And this doesn’t happen very often, but they pretend that they … Say they have a job where they’re getting paid cash and they say, “No, no …” I had one guy, he said, “Yeah I get paid under the table.” And I go, “Okay well that’s fine, so we’d have to list that income.” He says, “No no, it’s under the table.” and I go, “No I understand what you mean by under the table, but in bankrupts we have to list all that.” He goes, “No no, you don’t understand it’s not reported anywhere.” And I said to him, “Look, what you’re suggesting would be considered bankruptcy fraud. If that’s what you want to do, you’re in the wrong place. You can decide if you want to break a federal law and end up potentially going to prison, but I’m not going to assist you in that.”

Other times, I’ll tell you what, Katherine, other times people have come in and there are better options for them. They don’t have a ton of debt, and they’re making a regular income, sometimes working out a payment plan using a consumer credit counseling company or something like that where they can get their minimum monthly payments reduced, sometimes that works. Other times it’s just … Okay, say a person comes in and they have a house with a lot of equity in it, and if they file a chapter seven bankruptcy case, they’re going to potentially lose the house. I’m just going to say to them, “Look, you probably don’t want to do this if you like the house.”

Every case is unique, so it really depends on what the circumstances of the person’s situation are.

And we do try to emphasize that when we talk with you that they need to talk with you specifically because it could be one small thing because as you’re talking, of course the first person deliberately trying to do something that’s a no, no, but if I have equity in my home, that wouldn’t be something that I thought of especially if I said, “Hey, I’m reaching out to you, attorney Doig, because I want to not get myself into a pickle.” I may think it’s worse than it is and you can show me a better way around that, and we don’t look at attorneys as someone who help most times, but since you’ve been coming on the show, I think that we’re helping the audience to see that it’s not like sharks coming to get us, you know? You want to make sure that we’re doing the best thing for ourselves, and ultimately for your business, too because you could have taken the guy’s case who’s getting paid under the table, but you also say to yourself I don’t want to be an attorney anymore.

I think people don’t understand that there are a whole bunch of different variables that play a part, so listening to this segment on the show is good, it’s a good beginning of the conversation, but you may have that one thing that we didn’t talk about that attorney Doig can help you to really understand better, and to choose the best part. That was my curious question there.

I’m going to the ABCs on your website here, and I want to know, what is a BPP? I don’t understand that term or that acronym.

Yeah, that’s a bankruptcy petition preparer. That’s a person who’s not a lawyer who advertises that they can help people file bankruptcy, that they’ll prepare the paperwork for them. That’s allowed, frankly, bankruptcy allows for non-lawyers to assist people in preparing the paperwork, but that’s all they can do. They are, under the law, they can take the information that people give them and type it onto a bankruptcy petition form. They cannot give any legal advice as to whether a chapter seven or a chapter 13 could be appropriate, they cannot give any legal advice as far as whether assets might be exempt or not. They cannot give any legal advice period.

In Colorado, they’re limited. There used to be some that were charging, honest to God, over a thousand dollars, which the court ultimately cracked down on that because these are people that really … Some of them, the so-called work that they’ve done has really hurt the potential client by harming them –

Oh, wow.

For instance, I was sitting at a creditors meeting and a couple was there and they had used a bankruptcy petition preparer. Of course they’re on their own then. They have to drive the paperwork up to Denver, file it, and then they’re there at the creditors meeting, and they had a lot of money that was in a Wells Fargo bank account that one of their mothers had given them. It’s been a while, it was like 9,000 dollars or something. What Wells Fargo does when they find that one of their depositors has filed bankruptcy, they take the money, they hold it, and then they let the chapter seven trustee know that they’ve got the money, so these people say to … The trustee asks them about this money that Wells Fargo has frozen in their account, and they say, “Oh, that was from my mom, so can you get that back from Wells Fargo?” The trustee says, “Yes, and I’m going to use that to pay your creditors.”

“Oh, but that wasn’t my money, that was from my mom.” The trustee’s just like, “Well, sorry.” Ultimately their mom ended up, I can’t remember why she gave them the money, but whatever the deal was, that 9,000 dollars went to pay the credit card debts of the debtors rather than going back to the mother or whoever. If those people had spent a reasonable legal fee and had met with somebody who practices bankruptcy law, namely a bankruptcy lawyer, if they came to me I would have said to them, “Hey, look, first of all, you’re going to close that Wells Fargo account before we file your case,” and if they then say, “What am I going to do with the money?” We’ll deal with that. We would deal with it.

The funds are unavailable to them, then. They’re not able to, yeah.

They lost it. It cost them 9,000 dollars.

Wow.

They were saving a few bucks by using somebody who’s not qualified to do the job that they needed done. Penny wise, pound foolish, oh well, sorry. That’s basically what bankruptcy petition preparers are. They’re people who are not licensed as attorneys who pretend that they can prepare paperwork for people who need to file bankruptcy, and they do it for a fee.

Mm-hmm (affirmative), mm-hmm (affirmative). What you don’t know can hurt you. Wow. Now what happens when you have a person who needs to file bankruptcy, you’ve done the qualifying questions and interview, and bankruptcy would be the best route for them, but they can’t afford to?

They can’t afford to file bankruptcy?

Right.

I don’t know. Bankruptcy would be appropriate. I’ll tell you what, I do take some pro bono cases if the person’s situation is such that I see that they really need the help and there’s no way they’re going to be able to afford it, but I choose those. I’ve had able bodied people who just aren’t working, and they say, “Well we have no money, can’t you just do it for free?” And it’s like, you know what, sorry. I have overhead, I have an assistant to pay, I have rent to pay. What if somebody can’t afford a bankruptcy lawyer? If I don’t take it as a pro bono case, I’ll refer them to Colorado Legal Services or tell them I’m sorry and wish them the best of luck. This isn’t a hobby.

But there are still resources. Yeah, and I get that, but there are some resources still again, you’re saying, “Listen, this is your situation, and here are your options,” you know?

Yeah, exactly right.

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Now what’s an emergency bankruptcy? Let me back up a little bit, when I saw this one on the site, I said, “Emergency,” I’m thinking any time someone’s in a bankruptcy, it’s an emergency, so now I’m thinking, okay, Bob, explain this to me because if I’m filing bankruptcy, I’m feeling like I’m in an emergency already, so what, really, is an emergency bankruptcy?

There really shouldn’t be any emergency bankruptcies, Katherine, but sometimes a person will have a house, say, that’s in foreclosure, and they want to keep the house, and it’s going to go to the public trustee’s sale, it’s going to be on a Wednesday at 10:00 in the morning, and they might call on Monday or Tuesday and say, “Hey, my house is going to be sold through foreclosure the day after tomorrow or tomorrow morning, I need to file a bankruptcy case immediately.” There are provisions to do that. We could get them in, they’d have to take the pre-bankruptcy filing class, we’d have to pull their credit report, get a list of all their creditors, and we could file what’s called a skeleton petition.

I’ll tell you, though, it’s not something that I actively seek to do for people because I’ve found, in the couple of cases that I’ve done that, as an aside I’ve got to tell you you’ve picked a couple of real questions that … These are like the bad things. At any rate, if somebody has, say we filed a petition, the skeleton petition on Tuesday night, it stops their foreclosure. We then have 15 days from that day to get all the other information that we need from the people in order to make sure that the bankruptcy case has been filed correctly.

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Something that’s been waiting for four months whose house has been, and that’s how long it takes from the time a foreclosure is filed in Colorado until the sale date, it’s four months. If they couldn’t call three months before, two months before, one month before, one week before, if they waited until two days before to call because then it’s an emergency, is it really an emergency? I don’t know, I don’t think so.

Because they’ve known for a while?

They’ve known for months. You know what, the type of person who waits that long, they aren’t going to be cooperative, they’re not going to get me the paperwork that’s needed to get their case filed or to get it filed correctly within the 15 days. I just know they’re not going to do it, so I just tell them, “I’m sorry, I can’t help you, Best of luck.”

An emergency filing is basically a filing that I’m not going to do.

Alright.

How’s that?

But you gave some very good information, because I not being an attorney did not know that I’m coming to you with this, two days before not knowing. It’s amazing when you know that this person had four months, and I’m coming to you going in two days they’re going to foreclose on my house, or two days they’re going to repossess my car. Whatever it is, it’s an emergency, but failing to understand that you know, probably as much information as I know about my situation if not more, you had time. You had time.

Katherine, here’s what happens. A foreclosure gets filed. There are probably a dozen real estate brokers who specialize in selling properties that are in foreclosure. Those people will be knocking on the door, they’ll be sending them mail and then they’ll be stopping by.

Oh, they’ve known about it … No one just found out. That’s not true. They will have received letters from a number of bankruptcy lawyers. There are bankruptcy lawyers who are looking for people whose houses are in foreclosure so they can help them out, and they send mail. I’ve had clients come into the office with their house in foreclosure and I say; “Have you gotten any mail or anything?” And they bring the stuff in, so I know in advance if this potential client tells me I just found out that my house is going to be sold by the public trustee on Wednesday, I know that that’s just not true. I know it’s not true. Unless they’ve been out of the country, but if they’ve been out of the country, then you know they had money to pay their house payments.

I don’t know, any rate …

These were very interesting when I read over them. We don’t just want to give people the good, you have a job to do, and there’s some things that people need to understand, and this would make my stomach turn, and I may have been one of those people who waited as close as I can until the last minute, maybe I tried everything I knew, but I wouldn’t come and tell you that I just found out. I would say, “Attorney Doig, this is everything I’ve been trying, and now I’m at the last minute. Can you help me?” But yeah, these are things that people need to understand that you know the process, so me coming to you with someone else has prepared my paperwork for me who doesn’t have your knowledge, it’s too late and be coming to you two days before or just at the last minute for a bankruptcy, you know that I had time and I could’ve come to you and consulted with you before to get my best route.

These are life circumstances, there is help, but it comes with planning. Let’s go ahead and wrap up our interview. I want you to let people know your website so they can go by and see more of the ABCs of bankruptcy and how to get in touch with you.

Okay, Katherine, the ABCs of bankruptcy, they’re actually on my website called springsbankruptcylaw.com.

Okay.

If they want to give me a call, best number to reach me at is 719-227-8787. Again, that is 719-227-8787, or, like I said, www.springsbankruptcylaw.com.

Awesome, until next time, Attorney Doig, thank you so much. Have a wonderful day.

Thank you very much, Katherine. You, too, have a great day. Okay.