You’ve filed for bankruptcy, and you get a notice from the court about a creditors meeting. What is this? Is it important? Do you have to go? What will happen at the meeting? Can the creditors stop your bankruptcy case?

Most people who file a bankruptcy case do so once in their lives. Thus, most people who file bankruptcy have no idea what a creditors meeting is, what happens there, what impact it can have on their bankruptcy case or, truthfully, anything at all about what the creditors meeting means or does. This is only one of many reasons why you should always hire an experienced attorney to take you through bankruptcy. An experienced attorney can guide you and help you understand what happens when you file bankruptcy every step of the way, including the meeting of creditors.

A lot of people have no idea the government has a debt consolidation plan. Did you know that? Probably not. What if I told you this debt consolidation plan is limited to 3-5 years, you pay what you can afford to pay, and at the end of the plan whatever doesn’t get paid off, gets wiped out, tax free? Peeks your curiosity doesn’t it?

When you file for bankruptcy, you likely face debts that far exceed your ability to pay them, and may have for some time. Maybe you have medical bills, car repairs, house repairs, or other unplanned major expenditures that make it difficult for you to keep up with your regular bills, like your car payment, utilities, credit cards, and your mortgage or rent. You’ve fallen behind on bills, and you alternate paying different bills each month, sometimes just enough to keep the water and electricity turned on. Maybe you’ve even fallen behind on your mortgage. You never answer your phone for numbers you don’t recognize out of fear it is another creditor calling to demand payment. You may receive notice loans in default or of lawsuits filed against you by creditors. You want to make it stop, but you don’t have the money to catch up, and you don’t know any other way to keep your creditors at bay.

In Part One of this series, we began reviewing some common terms you may hear during a consumer bankruptcy case. It is important to understand what is happening in your bankruptcy, which is possible with the help of an experienced Minnesota bankruptcy lawyer at Kain & Scott. Below, find brief explanations of additional common bankruptcy terms.

While bankruptcy can provide many benefits for consumers struggling with debt, the process can be a confusing one. Specifically, you may hear many terms during your case with which you may not be entirely familiar. It is important to have the assistance and guidance of an experienced bankruptcy attorney who can explain every step of the process, including key bankruptcy terms. In the meantime, the following are some brief definitions of common terms in consumer bankruptcy cases. For information regarding your specific situation, call the Minnesota bankruptcy attorneys at Kain & Scott today.

Just like there is good cholesterol and bad cholesterol, there is also good debt and bad debt. The average Minnesota household has about $134,000 in debt. But much of this debt is secured debt, like mortgages and auto loans. Most people do not mind paying these loans, as long as the terms are reasonable and they like the car, house, or other collateral.

Most people see bankruptcy as a last resort. Typically, that strategy is a sound one. It’s usually best to try to work things out with moneylenders before choosing a more radical path.

The quick answer is yes, but you have to act quickly.

Before 2005, an eviction was just like a foreclosure. Even if a landlord got a signed court order from a judge, a bankruptcy stopped the eviction process. The Automatic Stay in Section 362 of the Bankruptcy Code applied. But the oddly-named Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act contained a number of pro-creditor changes, and the interplay between the stay and eviction was one of them.

This question presses upon the thousands of people who either serve at one of the National Guard bases in Minnesota or work for a firm which supports these men and women. In many cases, if a person loses a security clearance, the person also loses that job. Such a situation clearly makes the family’s financial situation worse instead of better.

 Most of us occasionally run out of money before we run out of month. In this precarious situation, just one serious financial setback can have a devastating effect. Setbacks like serious illness, divorce, or job loss can happen to anyone at any time. When these situations cause financial turmoil, you basically have two choices. You can watch things get worse or you can do something about it.

Consumer debt is one of the more troubling problems of our time. One in four people experience Post Traumatic Stress Disorder-type symptoms because of such debt. If you belong to this group and you are looking for a way out, Chapter 7 bankruptcy may be the exit strategy you have been looking for.

In my last two blogs I’ve written about a common problem with chapter 13: a client’s financial situation has changed during the time the chapter 13 case is pending, and making a monthly chapter 13 payment to the trustee, which once was affordable, is no longer affordable.

In this blog, I’ll write about the options that chapter 13 debtors have when a chapter 13 case no longer “works.” I’ll write about short-term solutions first.

Some clients at Kain & Scott run into problems making their chapter 13 plan payments because of a short-term, temporary financial problem.  For people in a temporary bind, the difficulty in making a chapter 13 payment doesn’t have to spell doom for the chapter 13 case.  Last week I wrote about fixes for short-term problems - catching up on back payments or agreeing to enter into a cure order - to catch up on chapter 13 payments and continue down the financial road to an eventual chapter 13 discharge of debt.

Right before his son went off to the big city in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius told Laertes “Neither a borrower nor lender be/For loan oft loses both itself and friend.” In other words, be careful about borrowing and lending money to friends. If you lend, they won’t pay it back; if you borrow, you’ll fall out of favor. But loaning and borrowing is not bad. In fact, sometimes both are very good.

His advice is still valid in today’s Minneapolis. People haven’t really changed much since the sixteenth century. So, mixing money and friendship still ends badly most of the time. But sometimes, you need to borrow money. In fact, over two-thirds of the nation’s $13.2 trillion in household debt is mortgage debt. Most of the time, mortgage debt is “good debt.”