Wondering where to file for bankruptcy in Duluth, Minnesota? Envisioning a cramped dimly-lit office with an anonymous attorney frowning at your paperwork, while you fret, embarrassed, over the amount of your debt?

Traditional bankruptcy filing requires hours of paperwork and the process of finding an attorney, filling out forms, being trapped in stuffy waiting rooms, and playing phone tag with creditors, can take over your life. Who has time for that? Don’t you wish there was an easier way to file bankruptcy in Minnesota where you controlled the process, instead of the process controlling you?

Over the past four weeks, I’ve written about the legal consequences of filing bankruptcy. As I wrote when I started looking at the legal outcomes of filing bankruptcy, while the legal consequences of filing are certainly critical for my clients to understand, legal consequences are not the only factors in a client making a decision as to whether to file a bankruptcy case. For my clients, it is just as, if not more important for them to be clear about the financial consequences of filing a bankruptcy case. The effect of filing a bankruptcy financially is what we will look at this week. And I will concentrate on what happens to the consumer debtor (as opposed to the business debtor) when I write about the financial impact of filing bankruptcy.

Many people have misconceptions about bankruptcy and what it is designed for. Let’s shed some light on two aspects of bankruptcy. First, how bankruptcy protects us from malicious credit and debt collection harassment. Second, what a powerful financial tool bankruptcy can be to help you get your life back.

Bankruptcy is a subject most people want to avoid - people want to avoid the stress of having to deal with unmanageable debt. Bankruptcy is often treated as a taboo subject - only our closest friends and relatives know about our financial affairs, and there's usually an even smaller circle of people who know about our financial struggles.

At Kain & Scott, our firm helps hundreds of Minnesotans each year recover from many different types of unmanageable financial problems. When you’re drowning in debt, you don’t need to continue to struggle. Look to a professional, kind and helpful MN Bankruptcy Lawyer who understands your needs and is able to help. Each day that we put off resolving our overwhelming debt problems we are impacted negatively in a variety of ways - especially our credit rating, which is an essential financial tool for many of us. When your debts are piling up, you need help now. Here are some tips our staff has put together to aid you along the way and get you the help you need fast!

Every day, the MN Bankruptcy Lawyers at Kain & Scott see people who are in financial distress - the people with whom we meet find themselves in debt situations that are not easily resolved. Of course, the degree of the financial problem varies from client to client, but our clients come to meet with us because they know that their problems can’t be solved easily.

Over the past month, I’ve written about the History of Bankruptcy - from its ancient, biblical origins, through the ancient world and in Europe during the Renaissance period. I’ve paid particular attention to the history of bankruptcy in the United States. I’ve written about the inclusion of bankruptcy in the Constitution as the exclusive legislative prerogative of Congress, and looked at the attempts Congress made to pass a national bankruptcy law in 1800, 1841 and 1867 - all attempts at having an orderly system of bankruptcy in the United States, all eventually politically unpopular and all, eventually, repealed.

Last week, I wrote about the Bankruptcy Act of 1898 - the first “permanent” bankruptcy law in the United States. The 1898 law came about as Congress’s reaction to the financial panic of 1893. There had not been a national bankruptcy law since 1873 when the 1867 law, like the two previous attempts at federal bankruptcy law, was repealed. The abuses of the previous bankruptcy laws had hardened political opposition to a federal bankruptcy system. However, by 1898, creditors were experiencing extreme difficulty in collecting even a portion of debts owed to them in some states, due to those states’s debtor-creditor laws.

In the previous two weeks, I’ve written about the origins of bankruptcy law. In the first week, I wrote about the formation of debt forgiveness in the ancient world up to the ratification of the Constitution of the United States, and noted that the framers of the Constitution gave Congress the exclusive power to create uniform bankruptcy laws in the United States.

Last week, I wrote about the historical origins of the bankruptcy law - that the concept of a structured program of debt forgiveness was as old as Moses, and that Julius Caesar had formulated the first bankruptcy law that contained features that continue to this day. At the end of last week’s blog, I referred to Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, that gave the United States Congress the sole authority to make “uniform” bankruptcy law. This week I’ll look at the historical development of bankruptcy law in the United States, from the time of our nation’s founding, to the present.

My last two blogs have discussed the “worst case” scenario any bankruptcy debtor encounters: the risk of not being granted a discharge, or if the debtor has already been discharged in a case, the revocation of that discharge. Since the reason to file a bankruptcy case is to receive a discharge of a debtor’s liability for debts, revocation or denial of that discharge is a complete frustration of the purpose of the bankruptcy. When a discharge is denied or revoked, then creditors can continue to collect against debtors as though the bankruptcy had never taken place.

There is a law, in effect in all fifty states of the United States, that allows people who have entered into contracts to borrow money or to receive credit to have their contractual obligations discharged - wiped out - without harsh consequences to the borrower. This is the Bankruptcy law, set out in the U. S. Bankruptcy Code, and at first look it seems to be a very unusual public policy. Don’t we want people to honor their debts? What about the financial well-being of lenders if they run the risk of a government-sanctioned method of allowing people who asked the lender for money with a promise of repayment to break that promise? So where does this policy come from? That’s what we’ll look at in this blog.