Our Bankruptcy Consultation Checklist is straightforward, because we know that filing for bankruptcy is hard.
It’s a decision that might have taken you months, or even years to come to.
What should you bring to your bankruptcy consultation?
Every lawyer is different, but Walker & Walker Law Offices tries to keep things simple for potential clients.
We ask only that people bring the following:
- Your two most recent paystubs, if you have a job that gives a pay check
- Your ID card, driver’s license, photo ID, passport, or military ID
- An idea of how much debt they have and what type of debts you have
We don’t expect you to bring a credit report, or tax returns, or to have a regularly-maintained spreadsheet of your budget and all of your debts.
(Although if you have, this is very useful!)
So long as you have a basic idea of how much money you make and what property and assets you own, we can figure it out from there.
It is true that filing bankruptcy in Minnesota requires lots of detailed financial information, but we don’t expect you to have everything or know everything before coming to your first consultation.
After all, it is the role of your Minnesota Bankruptcy Lawyer to help you figure out what is happening in your financial life and then tell you how it will all work in bankruptcy.
What should you know before your bankruptcy consultation?
The whole purpose of the bankruptcy consultation is to learn whether or not it would be a good idea for you to to file Chapter 7 Bankruptcy or Chapter 13 Bankruptcy.
The bankruptcy laws themselves are complex and numerous, so your lawyer needs to determine how the laws would work on someone in your financial situation.
Your lawyer, however, doesn’t yet know your financial situation.
We don’t expect tons of details about whether payments have been late, but you should know the balance of any:
- Car loans to the nearest thousand
- Mortgage loans to the nearest thousand
You should know approximately how much debt you have in terms of:
- Credit card debt
- Medical debt
- Student loan debt
We can get a credit report to figure out how much debt is out there, but credit reports often don’t have things like medical debts.
We can also help try to determine what your houses and cars are worth by looking at:
The most important thing to know before coming to your bankruptcy consultation is that you should keep an open attitude.
What else do you need to know?
We have to ask lots of questions and know lots of information to make a bankruptcy work.
If you don’t know everything at the first conference, it is ok. We can always get some documents or make some phone calls to fill in missing information.
Walker & Walker Law Offices will never file bankruptcy for you when bankruptcy is not the right option.
The purpose of the consultation is to figure out how it would all work, and decide with your whether or not it would be a good idea to move forward and file the bankruptcy.
CONCLUSION
If you are in Minnesota and have too much debt, Why not call us at (612) 824-4357 and let us figure out together whether it would be a good idea to file bankruptcy or not.
