• We let you answer your phone without your heart seizing with fear that it’s someone calling to collect a bill.
• We give you room in your mailbox for birthday cards instead of bills.
• We let your answering machine be empty when you come home from work.
• We let you know your kids will be going to the same school next fall, because you’ve saved your home from foreclosure.
• We let you know you’ll keep your job because you’ve saved your car from being repossessed.
• We let you sleep at night.

Oh, and we also deal with creditors and the Court, prepare and file pleadings, argue on your behalf, and do all of the other “lawyer work.”

But what our clients remember is the important stuff above. *That* is what we really do.

Others ran into severe problems at the Meeting of Creditors, where they have no one to turn to for preparation or advice, Generally, pro se debtors don’t know what the Trustee is looking for, or how to properly deal with the Trustee’s questions and concerns. One ended up being charged with bankruptcy fraud–all because she didn’t understand the effects of what the information put in their schedules meant.

Finally, under the new bankruptcy law, there are a number of new deadlines that, if missed, can result in the automatic dismissal of your case, and a potentially very complex means test computation. Many bankruptcy attorneys are no longer practicing in this area of law as a result of the changes.

Bankruptcy is a very tricky area of the law (even to attorneys who don’t regularly practice it). Interestingly enough for a federal system, it is very state and locality specific. What will work in California, for example, probably won’t fly here in Maryland.

Do yourself a big favor—see a lawyer.

It’s always nice to look as if you’re doing something in response to a problem. It’s even nicer to actually do something. Unfortunately, the task force’s recommendations sound a lot more like window dressing than actual improvements in the current foreclosure system in Maryland.

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BusinessWeek has two companion articles: “Conveniently Not Updating,” about improper credit reporting of discharged debt, and “Whose Second Chance,” about improper collection of discharged debt.

The fact that BusinessWeek (of all magazines) is doing stories about creditor abuse is a clear reflection of just how rampant this sort of thing is.

Cathy correctly notes that, “Calling for gobs of only marginally relevant information was one strategy that creditors included in the bankruptcy “reform” legislation to deter people who needed bankruptcy relief from getting it. They claimed it was to deter fraud; in reality, they counted on the debt ridden to be disorganized, stressed, and discouraged.”

Many people thinking about bankruptcy are indeed stressed and discouraged. Asking them to try and find information that, even if available, is likely to be irrelevant to their case, just adds to their discomfort and confusion. (My favorite is the question asking whether the filer “owns or has possession of any property that poses or is alleged to pose a threat of imminent and identifiable harm to public health or safety.” Asking this question usually results in the response, “Huh?”) But the name of the game here is “Disclosure, Disclosure, Disclosure.” Disclosure, even of irrelevant but required information, serves a number of purposes:

1. It’s required by the law.
2. It shows that you have nothing to hide and makes you look truthful.
3. It makes the Trustees less likely to dig at the Meeting of Creditors.
4. It helps your lawyer be informed—and things you don’t think are important may be. What your lawyer doesn’t know CAN (and probably WILL) hurt you.

In short, the more detail you provide your lawyer, the better and more smoothly your case is likely to go.

According to Realtytrac, a foreclosure tracking service, “August and September were the two highest monthly foreclosure filing totals we’ve seen since we began issuing our report in January 2005,”

And the big interest resets from loans closed in 2006 still haven’t started.

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Read “Can I File a ‘Medical Bankruptcy’?”