Doing Bankruptcy Yourself

It is fairly easy to say that most people are afraid to file bankruptcy themselves or more specifically file without an attorney. The reason is doing bankruptcy yourself adds stress to an already stressful situation. In addition, to filling out legal documents correctly you have to be aware of exactly what documents you need to file. Also, filing by yourself is not just filing out paper work. You need to figure out if you qualify for chapter 7 bankruptcies or chapter 13 bankruptcies. So, before you can even file you need to figure out what method is used to decide to which chapter you belong in. The difference between one and the other can be the difference in walking away with no debt or very little debt to being in a bankruptcy payback plan that requires you to pay either a 100% pay back plan to your creditors for a period of 3-5 years or walking away with zero debt for a chapter 7.

The person interested in filing bankruptcy will begin their research by reading about filing Pro Se. Therefore, if you are filing bankruptcy by your self you are commonly referred to as “filing pro se”. This means you represent yourself and you have no attorney to walk you through your case or act as a proxy between you and any trustee, be it local or US trustee. All communication with trustee will be your responsibility. One of the benefits to having an attorney is they know by experience what bugs trustees and should have the inside scoop of

what bugs the trustee. In one such case the trustee would get extremely annoyed by people answering his question under oath before he was ever finished with the question. It is ability or experiences of knowing or learning these little nuisances that you pay for when you hire an attorney to represent you.

So where do you start when you begin your journey to file. You should visit your states bankruptcy courts and see what they have for filing bankruptcy online or what websites provide information. You need to find out which district you belong to and what court you will submit your bankruptcy petition to.

If you are interested in a cheap bankruptcy then filing bankruptcy yourself using nolo’s bankruptcy guide is very useful and can help you get off to a good start if filing bankruptcy. Nolo’s guide covers several types of bankruptcy. As stated before , finding a good bankruptcy forum to discuss your case with similar people is also a good way of getting your feet wet before you start trying to go it alone trying to get a cheap bankruptcy