Oak Park Real Estate & Estate Planning Blog

In recent years, more older adults and the elderly have been seeking bankruptcy protection. In some cases, filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy or Chapter 13 bankruptcy can allow a person to get a fresh start financially. Chapter 13 bankruptcy can be especially beneficial to consumers who are facing foreclosure and want to find a way to stay in their homes and get back on track with mortgage payments. But is bankruptcy really the best option for seniors? According to a recent article in Investment News , bankruptcy may not be the best way for older adults to deal with debt. While younger people can rebuild savings and credit profiles, that work is more difficult for someone at the age of retirement. The older a person is, the more difficult those tasks become. Accordingly, for an adult aged 70 and up, getting back on track financially can be more difficult than it may seem. Yet whether bankruptcy is the right decision for you always depends upon your particular circumstances. If you have...

When we talk about the financial crisis and the bursting of the housing bubble, we often discuss it in the past tense—as something that occurred about a decade ago and is now over. However, many consumers in Oak Park, Illinois and across the country continue to struggle with debt , and many are still dealing with the lingering effects of the financial crisis. According to a recent article in Marketplace , seniors are having particular difficulty recovering from the economic collapse. Some are filing for personal bankruptcy , while others are attempting to live off of limited incomes while still making payments on debt. What debt relief options are available to older adults, and are those debt relief options different from those available to younger people? Lost Money in Retirement Accounts There are many reasons that seniors are struggling with their finances in the decade after the economic collapse, including those who saved significant amounts of money in reti...

Consumer protections for student loan borrowers are not just for younger adults who have graduated recently from an undergraduate institution or from a graduate program. Protection from abusive lending practices concerning loans actually extends beyond adults who have gone back to school to complete a degree or to earn an advanced degree. According to a recent article in the Chicago Tribune , many senior citizens are in need of protection from harmful debt collection practices for student loans. You might be asking yourself, are a lot of elderly residents of Chicago going back to school and taking out loans? In general, the answer to that question is no. Rather, many of the older borrowers who are facing significant student loan debt have taken out the loans for their children and grandchildren. The article refers to this segment of the borrowing population as “the fastest-growing category of student loan debtors.” Do the same protections against unfair and deceptive lendin...

For elderly Chicago residents or those who are disabled, it can be difficult to live on what is often a fixed monthly income. As costs to live in Chicago continue to rise, making ends meet can become even more difficult. Many older adults and disabled adults in Illinois do not have many options for earning extra income, as a recent article in the Chicago Tribune reports. As such, many of those adults have turned to their credit cards to purchase food and to pay monthly bills. As a result, there are numerous seniors and disabled Illinoisans who owe substantial debts to creditors, and they are having difficulty paying back what they owe. In some instances, those debtors may even be subject to debt collection harassment . Given that the creditors are unlikely to be able to collect from persons who have limited assets and largely are living off of Social Security or Supplemental Security Income (federal disability benefits), is there anything that can be done to limit debt col...