Lansing Bankruptcy Planning

In my recent post I discussed the importance of pre planning your bankruptcy. When I filed bankruptcy in Lansing the best thing I did was preplan. It is so important to not only figure out which chapter of bankruptcy to file, it is also important to understand where you are at for your median income in relation to the size of your family and the chapter of bankrutcy you are planning to file and qualify for. This is what I considered when filing Bankruptcy in Lansing.

The reason why it is important to figure out if you are below or above the median income level for your household is the ability to aide in your decision on which chapter you will be filing but also if you have the risk of being auditied. If you plan on filing for bankruptcy you should:

1) Print 2 years of credit card statements

2) Get two years of utilities statements.

If you have already spoken to a bankruptcy attorney in Michigan, they will most likely tell you that you only need 3 months worth of statments along with some other various documents. Granted, this is most likely the only thing you will need....

Unless...

You are audited.

There are two types of trustees that operate in bankruptcy courts, the local trustee and the US Trustee. If the US trustee audits your account they will want a couple of years worth of statements. Now if you have already intiated your bakruptcy planning and then filed. You may have a problem getting Credit Card Statements back for two years. You may not be worried about being audited. However, audits can be random and if you get hit with a random bankruptcy audit you want to be prepared. I also like to think about quotas that need to be filled. For example, would the trustee pick my case to audit because my case looks easy? I do not know if there are quotas. However, I wouldn't want to roll the dice and be caught short.

If you are caustious person you either shred your credit card statements or you dispose of any documents containing credit card numbers or account numbers in a secure and responsible way.

So, If you are audited how do you inted to retrieve two years worth of credit card statments if you have shredded them? Well, if you pay your bills online you can most likely pull the account statments from the previous two years.

Here lies the problem... you are already stressed because you have to file bankruptcy, then you get notified you are being audited. In normal bankruptcy preplanning phases your attorney told you to stop paying your credit cards( or should have). You would now be saving the money or putting money aside to pay them off your attorney. The money saved from not paying your credit cards is used to pay on the property you intend to reaffirm or vehicle(s) you plan on reaffirming. Unfortunately, as soon as you stopped paying your credit cards your online accounts have locked you out.

Although I have not experienced this.. I assume the credit card companies will not be very helpful in trying to help you obtain 2 years worth of credit card statments so you can file bankruptcy on the credit card company. I am sure there will be an bankruptcy attorney or two that will tell you, that you don't need documents stretching back that far. However, if they want to see 2 years worth of tax documents it's a good bet that if you get audited during your bankruptcy they will want to see those statements going back for two years.

In the end filing bankruptcy is stressful. You don't want to add stress to an already stressful situation. Plan for bankruptcy and act on your plan. It is by far better to have too much documentation than to come up short and have your 341 delayed because you are missing some credit card statments or utility bills. These are only some of the lessons I have watched, read and learned from people claiming bankruptcy in Lansing.