Chapter 7, in the right situations, buys time to sell your home. It may buy only a couple of crucial months, or sometimes much longer. Our last several blog posts have been about using bankruptcy to either prevent various kinds of liens hitting your home or deal with those liens if they happen. For example, in the last few … Read More
Bankruptcy Protects You from Your Homeowners’ Association
Homeowners’ association debts are dangerous. Chapter 7 may help, but Chapter 13 protects you better by giving you lots of time to catch up. Filing bankruptcy gives you limited, but potentially very useful protection from your homeowners’ association liens and debts. A Chapter 13 “adjustment of debts” filing could especially help. Your Homeowners’ Association Is a Particularly Dangerous Creditor … Read More
Bankruptcy Prevents a Support Lien
Chapter 7 prevents a support lien by discharging other debts so you can afford the support payments. Chapter 13 does so by stopping liens directly. Child and Spousal Support Liens If you fall behind on child or spousal support payments, your ex-spouse can put a lien on your home. (Most likely a lien can be imposed on your other … Read More
Prevent Income Tax Liens with Chapter 13
Chapter 13 can prevent income tax liens on dischargeable taxes. But it’s riskier. It takes years, and you may pay some of that tax. Two weeks ago we showed how the filing of a bankruptcy case stops the recording of an income tax lien. A bankruptcy filing imposes the “automatic stay.” That law makes it illegal for the … Read More
Prevent Income Tax Liens with Chapter 7
Chapter 7 can effectively prevent income tax liens if it’s filed before a tax lien is recorded and the tax qualifies for bankruptcy discharge. Last week’s blog post was about filing bankruptcy to prevent the IRS/state from recording income tax liens on your home. The “automatic stay”—bankruptcy’s broad freeze of creditor collection actions—stops tax lien recordings immediately when you … Read More
Protect Your Home from Income Tax Liens
Bankruptcy can protect your home from income tax liens. In the right situations you pay nothing on the tax, instead of needing to pay it all. Income Tax Liens Are Dangerous Our last two blog posts were about judgment liens. First was about how filing bankruptcy can sometimes remove, or “avoid,” a judgment lien from your home. Second … Read More
Protect Your Home from Judgment Liens
Bankruptcy can protect your home from judgment liens. It can stop a lawsuit from becoming a judgment, and then a judgment lien. Judgment Liens Are Dangerous Our last blog post was about how filing bankruptcy can sometimes remove, or “avoid,” a judgment lien from your home. This is a great potential benefit of bankruptcy if a judgment lien has … Read More
Remove a Judgment Lien from Your Home
One great benefit of bankruptcy is the ability to remove a judgment lien from your home. It’s almost as helpful as writing off that debt. The Problem, and the Bankruptcy Solution Do you have a judgment lien on your home? If so, the debt on that judgment is secured by whatever equity you have in your home. The debt … Read More
Stripping a Second Mortgage with Chapter 13
Under the right circumstances bankruptcy can strip a second (or third) mortgage off your home’s title, and radically reduce how much you pay. Summary Do you have a second or third mortgage on your home? Imagine if you could stop paying that monthly mortgage payment. Imagine over the course of the next 3 to 5 years paying only as … Read More
Catch up on Property Taxes through Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy helps you catch up on property taxes: Chapter 7 discharges other debts, Chapter 13 helps with your mortgage & other special debts. Bankruptcy Stops a Property Tax Foreclosure Filing either a Chapter 7 “straight bankruptcy” or a Chapter 13 “adjustment of debts” case stops a foreclosure by your property tax authority. Filing bankruptcy stops most forms of debt collection … Read More
A Powerful, Affordable, Flexible Way to Catch up on Your Mortgage
Chapter 13 gives you a powerful, affordable, flexible, safe and successful method to catch up on your missed payment and save your home. Chapter 7 “Straight Bankruptcy” and Chapter 13 “Adjustment of Debts” The two main consumer bankruptcy options are Chapter 7 and Chapter 13.Most Chapter 7 cases only takes a few months—usually 3 to 4 months—from filing to … Read More
Afford to Pay Your Home Mortgage through Bankruptcy
Chapter 7 clears away your other debts so that you can afford to pay your home mortgage. Chapter 13 does so by helping you deal with special debts. Both Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 Improve Your Cash Flow A Chapter 7 “straight bankruptcy” case would very likely quickly write off (“discharge”) many of your debts. For many people it discharges most … Read More
Use Chapter 13 to Protect Home Equity
Chapter 13 gives you a unique, safe, flexible, and practical way to protect home equity that is larger than your homestead exemption. The Problem of Too Much Home Equity Our last two blog posts were about protecting the equity in your home through the homestead exemption. Two weeks ago was about protecting the current equity; last week about protecting future equity. The blog … Read More
Protect Future Home Equity with Bankruptcy Now
An underappreciated benefit of filing bankruptcy now is that doing so will protect the equity that your home will build in the future. Our last blog post discussed how to protect the equity currently in your home through the homestead exemption. We discussed property exemptions in bankruptcy in general, and federal and state homestead exemptions in particular. Overall we showed how … Read More
The Homestead Exemption in Chapter 7 Bankruptcy
The homestead exemption protects the equity you have in your home. If you don’t have too much equity, consider Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Our last two blog posts outlined 15 separate ways that bankruptcy can protect your home now and/or in the future. We’ll be explaining each one of these ways in 15 separate blog posts. Here is the first … Read More