Facing Bankruptcy in Minnesota? Call Walker & Walker Today!
When you hire a bankruptcy lawyer, they will be able to explain and knowledgbly walk you through the bankruptcy process. However, you will find that one of the number one tips that you get from a bankruptcy lawyer prior to actually filing for bankruptcy is that you need to be careful with your actions before filing. Some moves you may make seem pretty natural and even beneficial to you and your family. Unfortunately, to the impartial eye of the law, even moves made with the best of intentions can look like malicious fraud. So if you want to know a few tips that a bankruptcy lawyer would give you in the bankruptcy filing process, it would be to watch what you do before the filing process begins.
Don’t Transfer Money Around
You want to be very considerate with how your money moves around before you file bankruptcy. Even if you are sending money to friends or family on a regular basis, moving money from one bank account to another before bankruptcy looks very bad to the courts. In fact, this behavior is often considered fraud.
Similar to divorce, transferring money before you file for bankruptcy can only look like you are trying to hide it. By making it look like you have less money, it looks like you are trying to get a better deal out of bankruptcy. Usually when people get in trouble for this, however, they weren’t doing it maliciously. They just didn’t think about it. Unfortunately, fraud can have some major consequences, primary among them having your bankruptcy case that you need in order to deal with overwhelming debt dropped by the court.
Don’t Re-Title Your Assets
In the same vein as not moving your money to other, potentially unrelated accounts, you should keep the same thing in mind with your physical assets. This is where the law can get quite unfair to you if they do catch you retitling assets. In many cases, actual physical assets will often fall inside exemptions. Every state has a set exemption limit for certain assets. This means if your car is valued below a certain amount, you will get to keep it. Unfortunately, if you recently had that car retitled and gave it to your child, the bankruptcy court will see this as a sort of potential fraud. They will then take that car back and sell it to satisfy your debts, even if it would have been exempt otherwise. This is often seen as a sort of unfair punishment by the bankruptcy court especially since retitling assets is so rarely done with actual fraudulent intentions.
It is situations like these, situations that normal people can often fall into with the best of intentions, that make bankruptcy attorneys recommend you tread very carefully before filing bankruptcy. The best attorneys will actually ask if you have transferred money or retitled assets within a certain time frame just to help their clients try to avoid these unfortunate pitfalls. While it is often stressed how important what you do during the bankruptcy process is, some may forget that the perception the court has of your actions before you filed is important as well.
Finally, Contact a Bankruptcy Lawyer at Walker & Walker!
If you are filing for bankruptcy, then you have a potentially complicated road ahead of you, but it doesn’t need to be. With a great bankruptcy attorney by your side, you can make sure you get the most out of your bankruptcy case, never miss a filing deadline, and make sure that what you see as a normal action isn’t called fraud by the bankruptcy court. If you are getting ready to file and need help, contact us today to see what Walker & Walker can do to help.
