Oak Park Real Estate & Estate Planning Blog

If you filed for personal bankruptcy on your own—i.e., without help from an experienced bankruptcy lawyer—you could find yourself in a situation in which your bankruptcy discharge is denied. Given that consumer bankruptcy may be your only option for managing your debt and finding a way to get back on track financially, learning that your debts will not be discharged can be devastating. In some cases, the court might not discharge debt due to an error you made at some point during your bankruptcy case—from providing incorrect information unintentionally to failing to take one of the required steps in a bankruptcy case. In other situations, it could be that your debts are not dischargeable under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code . In other scenarios, the bankruptcy court might believe you engaged in bankruptcy fraud, in which case you could be facing additional penalties or legal problems beyond simply not getting your debt discharged. No matter what the cause, you should seek advice as soon...

If you are a consumer who applied for an SBA disaster loan in order to support your business during the coronavirus pandemic, there are a couple of ways in which Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program ultimately could impact consumers when it comes to personal bankruptcy . We want to tell you more about these loans and how they could come to have an impact on small business owners who are considering consumer bankruptcy. To explain the potential links between these SBA loans and consumer bankruptcy, we will tell you more about the loans themselves first. Then we will discuss some of the ways in which these loans could impact a consumer bankruptcy case. What Small Business Owners Should Know About SBA Loans According to a recent CNBC article , a large number of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) disaster loans, which include PPP and EIDL loans, were paid out to small businesses. Many of these businesses are sole proprie...

If you own a small business and you are having significant debt problems, you might be considering how bankruptcy laws could help you to get back on track with your business finances. In particular, given the ways in which the COVID-19 emergency has impacted small businesses in Chicagoland and across the country, many small business owners are struggling to keep their doors open, and some are considering the possibility of bankruptcy. For businesses that are structured as sole proprietorships, it is important to work with an Oak Park bankruptcy lawyer who has experience handling consumer bankruptcy cases because these bankruptcies ultimately will be personal bankruptcies . Businesses that are sole proprietorships are in effect the same entity as the business owner. Accordingly, any debts of the business are also the personal debts of the business owner, and vice versa. This means that a sole proprietorship cannot, on its own, file for bankruptcy without affecting the personal fina...

If you decide to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy or Chapter 13 bankruptcy , a bankruptcy trustee will be assigned to your case according to U.S. bankruptcy law . Depending upon the type of bankruptcy, the trustee will play different roles and will have a distinct function. Your Oak Park bankruptcy attorney can ensure that you file all materials appropriately and that you do not run into any errors concerning the bankruptcy trustee. In the meantime, we want to provide you with more information about the role the bankruptcy trustee plays in different types of consumer bankruptcy cases. Chapter 7 Bankruptcy and the Trustee’s Role In a Chapter 7 bankruptcy case, the trustee will play a different role than in a Chapter 13 case. Since Chapter 7 bankruptcy is a liquidation bankruptcy, the debtor will need to provide detailed information about all assets (both exempt and non-exempt), and all non-exempt assets will be liquidated (i.e., sold) in order to repay existing creditors. Here is where...

Consumer bankruptcy is an option for many Americans who are struggling with debt and need help moving forward with their financial lives. Regardless of the state of the economy, a certain number of consumers will experience difficulty managing debt and will seek advice from a bankruptcy lawyer about filing for Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy . In some situations, when a consumer is not eligible for Chapter 13 bankruptcy due to high amounts of secured or unsecured debt, that consumer might end up filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Generally speaking, most of us assume that lower rates of consumer bankruptcy mean that fewer Americans are struggling with debt, with higher rates of bankruptcy suggest that more consumers are having difficulty making ends meet. Yet according to a recent article in Bloomberg Law , particularly low rates of personal bankruptcy might also be a sign of problems. Indeed, according to that article, consumer bankruptcy rates may be “too low” for comfort. Bankr...

Are you considering personal bankruptcy ? Whether you are thinking about filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy or Chapter 13 bankruptcy, you might be wondering whether you can handle your case on your own. You might be thinking to yourself: I do not have much property at all, and I just want to file for a liquidation bankruptcy quickly in order to get it over with and to get a bankruptcy discharge. Or you might be thinking: I want to file for Chapter 13 bankruptcy, and I already have some ideas for a debt repayment plan. In such scenarios and in other cases, you might be asking yourself if you really need to hire a bankruptcy lawyer. Bankruptcy law is extremely complicated. While it may be possible for some debtors to go through a bankruptcy case successfully without a lawyer, this is a complex area of the law, and you should really have an experienced Oak Park bankruptcy lawyer on your side. The following are some of the top reasons to hire a bankruptcy attorney for your bankruptcy case....