Oak Park Real Estate & Estate Planning Blog

When you are considering personal bankruptcy, you are likely looking at the possibility of either Chapter 7 bankruptcy or Chapter 13 bankruptcy . While individuals do occasionally file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, this only happens when they are ineligible for Chapter 13 bankruptcy as a result of having too much debt, and it is a relatively uncommon situation. As you are looking into the possibilities for Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy, you may be asking yourself: How am I supposed to decide between Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcy? Ultimately, it is unlikely that you will be eligible for both Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcy at the same time since they have quite different eligibility requirements. Instead, you should be looking at the process for each type of bankruptcy and asking yourself the question: am I most likely to be eligible for Chapter 7 bankruptcy or Chapter 13 bankruptcy? And if you are seeking the particular benefits of one of these types of bankruptcy, you shou...

Consumer bankruptcy can be an extremely useful tool for debtors who are struggling with a wide range of debts, from medical debt and credit card debt to mortgage debt. Yet at the same time, bankruptcy is not necessarily the right choice for everyone. Given the complexity of the bankruptcy process and the different types of bankruptcy and eligibility requirements for consumers, it is always important to discuss your case with an experienced Oak Park bankruptcy attorney who can assist you. In the meantime, who should be thinking about the possibility of filing for bankruptcy? A recent article in Business Insider considers when debtors should be thinking about bankruptcy and when they should be thinking through other options. We can tell you more about bankruptcy and whether it might be helpful to consider its benefits given your particular financial circumstances. You Do Not Have Obvious and Clear Options for Repaying What You Owe Most often, bankruptcy is appropriate in situations whe...

Understanding how the consumer bankruptcy process works when you are the only one filing is complicated, so when spouses decide that they both plan to file for bankruptcy, the process can seek even more complicated. On the one hand, you might be wondering if it is even possible to file for bankruptcy with your spouse or whether you will each need to file separately. On the other hand, you might have questions about how your plans to file for personal bankruptcy can affect your spouse or partner if your spouse or partner does not want or does not intend to file for bankruptcy. There are many questions that often come up when you are considering or filing for bankruptcy that concern spouses and partners, and our Oak Park bankruptcy lawyers want to ensure that you have a general understanding of what is at stake and how spouses are affected by bankruptcy filings. If you have specific questions about your circumstances, you should always discuss the particular facts of your case with a la...

If you are considering personal bankruptcy in Illinois , you might already know that there are two general kinds of bankruptcy for consumers: liquidation bankruptcy and reorganization bankruptcy. In a liquidation bankruptcy, all non-exempt assets belonging to a debtor will be liquidated as part of the bankruptcy process. Which assets are commonly exempt from liquidation? Our Oak Park bankruptcy attorneys can provide you with more information. Liquidation Bankruptcy Versus Reorganization Bankruptcy Before we explain what assets are exempt in liquidation bankruptcies, it is important to understand what a liquidation bankruptcy is and how it compares to other types of consumer bankruptcy. With a liquidation bankruptcy — the type of bankruptcy that many people think about when they imagine a bankruptcy case — the debtor’s non-exempt assets are liquidated so that creditors can be paid and the debtor’s eligible debts can be discharged. Consumers who file for liquidation bankruptcy file for C...

Anyone in the Oak Park area who is considering personal bankruptcy to have student loans discharged should be aware that there is new guidance that will impact bankruptcy cases involving student loans. If you previously considered bankruptcy in order to have your student loans discharged, you likely came across a range of articles providing information about the difficulty — but not impossibility — of having student loans discharged in bankruptcy. For quite some time, student loans have been famously difficult to discharge in consumer bankruptcy cases, but at the same time, few consumers filing for bankruptcy have actually gone through the process that was required to see if their student loans could be discharged. That process was notoriously complex, costly, and time-consuming, requiring debtors to prove an “undue hardship” requirement. That undue hardship requirement largely required proving elements of what has become known as the Brunner test to show that continuing to pay stude...