Many people who don’t understand bankruptcy believe that bankruptcy means loss. They think that bankruptcy means losing all of your material things: your home, vehicles, and your stuff. They also tend to think that bankruptcy means losing non­-material things: your pride, your dignity, and your financial security.

A day ago, I had a conversation with a new client and it started out with a simple statement: “My wife and I are currently working with a debt relief company but it doesn’t seem to be working. We are $40,000 in debt now.”

Many people in Rochester know they need to file bankruptcy, but they are not always confident they know the difference between Chapter 7 and 13 Bankruptcy. I am going to explain the basic differences between a Chapter 7 and 13 Bankruptcy so it is easily understandable.

If you are contemplating filing a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy in or near Rochester, MN, do this now! Go now to www.kainscott.com and either set up a FREE strategy session to learn how you can resolve a debt problem for good or spend time researching Minnesota’s LARGEST bankruptcy website. You could literally read at www.kainscott.com for days and still not finish reading everything there is to read about bankruptcy that we have produced or written.

By the time you finish reading this blog it will be clear to you which firm is the best bankruptcy firm in Rochester, MN. If you spend 15 minutes on these questions, you are going to find an awesome Rochester, MN bankruptcy law firm.

Most people’s bottom line is cost. When researching potential bankruptcy attorneys, it is an obvious deciding factor. How much is this entire process going to cost? Or maybe, what is going to be the cost if I do not go through with the process?

“Timing is everything.” We have all heard the old adage. We have agreed with it at some point in our lives and rolled our eyes at it during others. Regardless of how one feels about the phrase, it certainly rings true when deciding at what point one should take the plunge and file for bankruptcy. By filing at the wrong time you may be taking needless risks with your money and assets by filing too late or not gaining all the benefits you could be by filing too early.

Change is healthy (and inevitable) fact of life. It can be welcome or not, it can be wonderful or it can be terrible. The bottom line is that we are all going to experience it in our lives –a lot!

When I need professional help of any kind, I turn to professionals. I always use a three prong approach for choosing a professional. Number 1—I want a professional who is experienced and really is the authority on the subject. Number 2—I want a professional who has awesome communication skills. I don’t baby sit professionals and neither should you. Number 3—I expect the professional to be kind to me, always—even if I am under stress and ask numerous questions, which I will.

Section 547 of the Bankruptcy Code lays out Preferences and what they are. In lay man’s terms, a bankruptcy Preference is simply when you “prefer” one creditor over another creditor. I think an example is in order. Say you paid 10k to MasterCard 30 days before filing Chapter 7 Bankruptcy. Now let’s assume during that same time frame you paid your other unsecured creditors nothing. The creditors who receive nothing say, wait a minute, because of MasterCard’s aggressive collection activities, MasterCard received 10k and the rest of us creditors received nothing and that is not fair.

For this article, we only focus on what is a fraudulent transfer under Section 548 of the Bankruptcy Code? There are other state based fraudulent transfer and conveyance statutes but that discussion is for a different blog article.

Student loan debt is what we have done to our children. The promise to the children is this: go to school, get a degree, and make more money and have a better life right? The price tag for this promise? Crippling student loan debt that can survive your death even. Like a gimmicky infomercial that promises some get-rich-quick scheme, colleges are infomercials on steroids. The price tag for an infomercial product or service may be 2-10k. The price tag for a college degree can easily exceed 100k. And who gets duped in the end and left holding the bag for this empty promise? You!

I can remember in law school the professors pounding into our heads that if you, even as a lawyer, try to represent yourself in a legal matter you have a fool for a client. This is especially true for non-lawyers who try to represent themselves in Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 Bankruptcy proceeding in Minnesota. Why? Bankruptcy is a complicated area of the law—one that takes years for a lawyer to master. 

I had a client of ours the other day comment on how she loved our website and she said something that really stuck with me. She said that are marketing presence was not “gimmicky”. That word “gimmicky” resonates with me because that is the opposite of what Kain & Scott is striving to do. We are striving to be the opposite of “gimmicky”. What did she mean by this?

When you are thinking strongly about filing a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy in Rochester, MN, you will be tempted to do one thing you definitely should NOT do before filing the bankruptcy. You will be tempted to pay family and friends on debts you owe them. We understand this temptation. But if you pay family and friends money before you file bankruptcy, so you can avoid listing them as a creditor on the bankruptcy or just because you want them to get paid back even though others creditors are not getting paid any money, that may be considered a “preference” and the trustee may be able to avoid that preference.

I was driving into work today, and as I was driving, I was reflecting on what it is exactly that we do at Kain & Scott. It was like a light bulb going off in my head. What we do at Kain & Scott is restore human dignity. We humans have imperfect brains. If we didn’t have imperfect brains life would be very dull and we would all be the same; we would all be perfect. That would really suck.