You can’t be sure that filing a bankruptcy will immediately stop every act against you by all of your creditors. Or can you? Isn’t one of the most important benefits of filing for bankruptcy that it puts a screeching halt to all collection efforts against you and your property?  Yes.  And in most cases it […]

According to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, home prices are going up all over the country. Do these increases signal that we’ve reached bottom and are heading into a period of sustained price increases? In my last blog I said that S&P/Case-Shiller 20-metro composite index had risen for the last three reported months in a […]

Home prices are edging up. At least according to the latest monthly S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index released in late August. It shows that home prices went up in every single one of the 20 metropolitan areas included in this index. I’ll look more closely at these price increases and tell you about them in my […]

In my last blog I gave you the first five of ten ways that Chapter 13 allows you to keep your home.  Here are the other five.   6. If you need to sell your home, Chapter 13 usually gives you much more time to do so than Chapter 7.  More time means more market exposure, […]

In my experience the number one reason people choose to file Chapter 13 instead of Chapter 7 is to save their home. And it’s not just because Chapter 13 gives you a bigger hammer against your mortgage company; It gives you a hammer, but also a whole bunch of other tools. Some are more subtle […]

The amount of property you get to keep in a bankruptcy is the result of a 200-year-old Constitutional battle of states’ right versus federal power.  The Bankruptcy Code provides for a uniform federal set of property exemptions, but if you live in one of 35 states, including Colorado, you probably cannot use those exemptions. Instead you’re […]

You may want the fast fresh start of a Chapter 7 case, but sometimes your circumstances scream out for a Chapter 13 instead.  It’s true—for some people Chapter 13 provides tremendous tools not available under Chapter 7. Now all you have to do is qualify for it. Qualifying for Chapter 13 is completely different than […]

Not everyone who wants to file a Chapter 7 “straight bankruptcy” can do so. But most can. There’s probably no topic that causes more confusion to people thinking about filing bankruptcy –do they qualify? Let me set the record straight. 1. Inaccurate publicity: Many people think it’s difficult to qualify for filing bankruptcy because of […]

Picking the right Chapter to use to file your bankruptcy case can be simple or very, very difficult. And appearances can be deceiving. First take a look at this video I recorded about the basic differences between Chapter 7 and Chapter 13.   A situation that seems at first to call for an obvious choice can turn […]

Rich Americans are buying again. The rest of us—not so much. The difference between the sales figures at luxury stores as compared to middle- and low-end ones shows who is coming out of the “Great Recession” doing pretty well and who is not. An article in the business section of the New York Times a […]