When you file bankruptcy, lawyers will tell you that the automatic stay goes into effect on the day you file a bankruptcy. But what is the automatic stay? Our Bankruptcy Attorneys in Minneapolis like to think of the automatic stay as a shield that goes up between you and all of your creditors. The automatic stay is a law built into the bankruptcy code to protect you from the actions of your creditors. It is a very powerful law. It protects you from creditors: collection calls or billing, starting or continuing lawsuits, garnishing wages or levying bank accounts, repossessions of vehicles and foreclosures of homes.

Are you contemplating filing a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy in Minneapolis? If so, then you want to know how much it costs. Let’s face it moneys tight and your debt is deep. After all you wouldn’t be even considering it if it wasn’t, right? Here’s a list of fees that you will encounter:

Imagine a world in which creditors could collect from debtors at will and without rules. It would be chaos, literally. Hypothetically speaking, if I know Pete owes me 10k and I know that Pete’s business is teetering on the brink of financial ruin, and there are no rules, what am I going to do? I tell you what I am going to do. I am going to secretly find out what assets Pete owns and then I am going to quickly assert control over those assets so I can get paid my 10k plus costs. I want to do this before any of Pete’s other creditors get wind of Pete’s financial condition and take his assets- before I can get paid. 

Oh the humility of being alive. Some of us go through life and never receive a DWI. Some of us should have received a 100 DWI’s and never receive one. Some of us never incur overwhelming debt, and yet, some of us will. Have you ever had a brain tumor? Me neither and yet 1000's of Minnesotans every year have them. Much of the time, life events’ are out of your control- seriously, they are. No one dreams of having a brain tumor or incurring overwhelming debt. This is not a place most of want to be. Yet, each year, over 10,000 good Minnesotans file bankruptcy. Why? The reasons are varied but most bankruptcies fall into one of 5 categories.

If you were recently involved in a car, truck, or motorcycle accident, you might be wondering whether you should file bankruptcy.  That is a complicated question that involves the intersection between two legal practice areas -- auto accident law, and bankruptcy law.  The answer depends on a number of factors.

At first a lot of people want to try and figure out how to file a bankruptcy themselves. However, after getting started they find that it is a lot more complicated and difficult than they had anticipated. Just like anything: if you don’t know what you’re doing it’s not going to go as smooth as it would with the use of a professional. The bankruptcy petition is extremely long, you need to attend a 341 meeting, possibly negotiate payments with a trustee and take credit counseling courses. Besides, making a mistake could potentially jeopardize your assets and financial future. That is why even though it might sound like a good idea at first, most people decide to hire an experienced Bankruptcy Attorney to help them through the process and ensure the best possible outcome. In the end they realize it’s worth the money and a much better deal than losing assets or paying the debt that an experienced lawyer will know how to get you discharged.

As a society, we value marriage. Culturally speaking, there is probably no more important institution than the institution of marriage. I am also happy to see this institution authorized for all members of society not just certain segments of society. But did you know that the one the single most important symbols of marriage, the wedding ring, could be seized to pay ones debts in Minnesota? Crazy but true.

Have you ever heard the expression, “bad things happen to good people?” No where in the law is this more true than in the bankruptcy world. Trust me when I tell you, your clients don’t come to you with overwhelming debt dreaming that would be the position they would find themselves in one day. Nobody grows up thinking some day I would like to find myself divorced, with 3 DWI’s and sure let’s toss in overwhelming debt too.

Roseville MN Bankruptcy and MN Divorce Law find themselves intersecting all the time. It’s almost as if these two areas of law go hand and hand. Debt causes marital strife which leads to divorce. Divorce causes a loss of income to both parties, separate households and therefore separate expenses, and typically debt as a result of the investment in getting the divorce itself; lawyers, custody studies, child support, alimony, and many other expenses associated with getting a divorce. In a lot of cases this all leads to bankruptcy eventually. 

A common question your Eden Prairie MN Bankruptcy Law Firm is asked all the time is do I have to have a minimum amount of debt in order to qualify to file a bankruptcy in Minnesota? The phrase it’s all relative is quite appropriate in answering this question. To a millionaire, 10k is pocket change. To a person making $8.00 per hour, 10k might as well be a million dollars. If I had to guess what the average size of a person’s debt is who comes in to see us a bout possibly filing a bankruptcy case, I would guess it averages roughly $20,000.00. That doesn’t seem like a lot of money if you are making 100k per year but again consider what 20k worth of debt looks like if you pay check every two weeks is only $512.00!?

Continuing on with our theme of the week- the top 5, next we tackle the top 5 questions your Roseville MN Bankruptcy Law Firm is asked. We do this for those of you who would like to know what it would be like to be a bankruptcy client of ours and what questions are commonly asked by our bankruptcy clients. I know that for me, you cannot give me too much information. I take in information like someone is giving me water through a fire hose! At Kain & Scott in Roseville, MN there is no dumb question- at all. We welcome all questions and would be happy to answer them again too! We recognize that this a foreign process to our guests and we want to take the time to answer all questions to your satisfaction. So, without further ado, here are the five most commonly asked questions by our current clients at Kain & Scott.

The Bankruptcy Attorneys in Maple Grove, MN and I spend our workdays meeting with people who are facing significant debt problems. The problems have reached the point where the people I meet with can’t handle their debt. They are in default, in foreclosure, in suit, in garnishment, in levy. They are in trouble. My clients come to me with a range of emotions. But almost all of them share one emotion: they are embarrassed to be here in a difficult financial situation. The stress of the debt they have is part of the feeling they have. But there’s more to this bad feeling than that.

How long will it take? The Maple Grove Bankruptcy Attorneys At Kain & Scott, get this question often. We don’t blame you either. Once you have made the decision to file a bankruptcy, get your life back, and protect your family, you want to get on with it and get this done. Scores of other clients feel the same way. Most former clients felt that the longest part of the process is deciding and agonizing over how to resolve an overwhelming debt problem. However, once they made the decision, and what once they got their lives back, they have all found that they had wished they would have filed bankruptcy much sooner than they did. I suppose it’s human nature to anguish over any problem whose resolution is a word most people would rather not hear- the “b” word or bankruptcy. Now maybe there are better words in the English dictionary, but I can think of far worse too.

I am always struck by the amount of courage people have to face a problem. Oh sure, flowers bloom at different times, and we all open up in our own ways. I respect that. Once you make the decision to file a bankruptcy and get your life back, your work is not over. In fact, selecting a Roseville Bankruptcy Attorney to represent you is just as important as the decision to file a bankruptcy. Why? Because to me, you just made one of the most brave decisions in your life and now, you want the job done right, with dignity and yes, with grace too.

It happens all the time. We receive phone calls from anxious Minnesotans looking at their bills and wondering how in the world am I going to pay these? I am continually amazed at how long good people can hang onto a seemingly hopeless financial situation. It is not that uncommon to see people do it for years, decades even.

When it comes to debt, human nature has a common thread that runs through all of us: we want to pay it. We want to pay all of our monthly bills and yet still have enough left over to eat, keep the lights on, and make the rent/mortgage payment to keep the roof over our heads. Most of us don’t want much beyond this.

Life is humbling is it not? Who among us starts out in life with the dream of incurring overwhelming debt we cannot pay for? Naturally, none of us do. And yet, it happens to 10,000 plus Minnesotans each year. At Kain & Scott, we have been practicing bankruptcy law since 1972. We have never seen a person yet who says something like- hey, I just got back from a fabulous trip with all my friends, using my credit cards, knowing I was going to file bankruptcy when I returned.