Oak Park Real Estate & Estate Planning Blog

If you are planning to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and you currently have a mortgage on a home, you likely have concerns about what will happen to your house. You might be considering bankruptcy in part because you have gotten behind on your mortgage payments and you are now facing foreclosure. Even if you are not facing foreclosure, you might be struggling to make mortgage payments and could be behind schedule by a couple of months. Combined with other consumer debt, you might be thinking that a liquidation bankruptcy is the best option to discharge your debts and to get a fresh start. What will happen to your home? Many people assume that anyone who owns a home and files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy will lose their home, and this is not automatically true. Indeed, the answer to that question depends on a handful of different questions and issues, and we want to give you an idea of where to get started. Is Your Home Going Into Foreclosure? One of the first questions you will want to c...

If you are thinking about filing for consumer bankruptcy and are currently a homeowner, you may also be someone who pays fees to a homeowners association. When it comes to homeowners association (HOA) fees, it is important to understand how this type of debt gets handled in a bankruptcy case. It will be essential to understand the distinctions between Chapter 7 bankruptcy and Chapter 13 bankruptcy for the purposes of HOA fees. To be clear, there are particular considerations for HOA fees that are different from other types of debt. We will explain more below. Understanding HOA Dues and HOA Debt As an article in The Balance explains, HOA fees consist of money that is paid to the homeowners association when you own a home in a particular neighborhood or building. In effect, HOA fees are better thought of as “dues” that “help you share costs with others in your community.” The homeowners association typically is “a group of homeowners in the same neighborhood or building who share c...