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Bankruptcy may be able to help you reduce or erase your medical debt. However, medical debts are handled differently in each type, or “chapter,” of bankruptcy in California. Therefore, it is important to understand how bankruptcy affects medical debt before you file your petition. In this article, the Roseville Chapter 7 lawyers of The Bankruptcy Group will explain some key differences between how medical debt is treated in Chapter 7, and what happens to medical debt when you file for Chapter 13. Depending on your financial resources, your long-term goals, and the amount of medical debt you’ve incurred, one chapter may be a better bankruptcy option than the other.

Chapter 7 Medical Debt Relief
Chapter 7, which is also called “liquidation bankruptcy,” is the most popular type of personal bankruptcy, not only in California but across the United States. According to federal bankruptcy court statistics, there were 486,347 Chapter 7 filings in 2017, including more than 50,000 in California’s courts.
Like debtors (people who file for bankruptcy) in Chapter 13, Chapter 7 debtors are required to meet a few federal bankruptcy requirements before filing a petition for bankruptcy. For example, it is mandatory to complete pre-bankruptcy credit counseling.
Once credit counseling and other pre-bankruptcy requirements have been successfully completed, it is time for the debtor to file his or her bankruptcy paperwork with help from a Folsom Chapter 7 bankruptcy lawyer. This includes:

• The petition for bankruptcy.
• Supporting financial documents that outline debts, assets, income, and other financial details.

If the court agrees to proceed after reviewing these documents, the court will randomly assign a trustee to the case. After examining your assets, the trustee may sell some of your property to your creditors (lenders to whom you owe money), which helps repay your debts. However, you can likely keep most or all of your property by strategically using bankruptcy exemptions, which our Sacramento Chapter 7 attorneys can help you evaluate carefully.
Once your debts have been repaid to the greatest extent possible, and you have completed several additional procedural requirements, the bankruptcy court will grant you a discharge if there are no issues with your case. The discharge wipes out liability for your remaining “dischargeable debts,” which are debts that can be erased in bankruptcy. Medical debts are dischargeable in Chapter 7, which means they will be wiped out at the end of your case.
During the Chapter 7, before you can receive your discharge, you may be required to pay off a portion of your medical debt. However, because medical debts are unsecured (not secured by collateral) and are not priority debts (such as child support or employee compensation), medical creditors typically receive a lower priority than many others in Chapter 7.

Chapter 13 Medical Debt Relief
Though slightly less widespread than Chapter 7, Chapter 13 is another common type of personal bankruptcy, with the federal courts reporting 294,637 Chapter 13 cases filed during 2017, including nearly 20,000 Chapter 13 filings in California. Chapter 13 is also known as “reorganization bankruptcy,” which should not be confused with Chapter 11 reorganization. (For more information about Chapter 11, which is typically used by businesses, consult with our Roseville Chapter 11 attorneys.)
Chapter 13 is very different from Chapter 7 in that, if the bankruptcy unfolds smoothly, none of your assets are at risk of liquidation. However, there’s a catch: in Chapter 13, you must agree to a long-term repayment plan, called a “plan of reorganization,” which requires you to use your disposable income to make recurring payments over a period of three to five years. This is where the term “reorganization bankruptcy” comes from.
If you follow the terms of your reorganization plan, and satisfy all other bankruptcy requirements, the court should grant you a discharge, similar to the Chapter 7 process our Roseville Chapter 13 bankruptcy lawyers described in the previous section. The discharge will wipe out the remaining dischargeable debts at the end of your reorganization plan. Medical debts are dischargeable in Chapter 13, which means that when you have finished your plan, your outstanding medical debt can be erased.
Sacramento and Roseville, CA Bankruptcy Lawyers Can Help You Get Rid of Medical Bills
Don’t rule out bankruptcy as an option until you have discussed your financial situation with an experienced Folsom Chapter 13 attorney. If you feel as though you are drowning in medical debt, it may be the right time to consider Chapter 7, Chapter 13, or potentially individual Chapter 11. In addition to lowering or eliminating your medical bills, bankruptcy can also help you keep valuable property, avoid utility shut-offs, get more time to pay off loans, and begin the process of improving your credit score. For a free legal consultation with an experienced Roseville bankruptcy lawyer from The Bankruptcy Group, contact us online, or call our law offices today at (800) 920-5351.
The post Should You File Chapter 7 or 13 Bankruptcy to Clear Medical Debt in CA? appeared first on The Bankruptcy Group, P.C..

There are many misconceptions about President Trump, bankruptcy, and his history in the business world. Some claim that Trump has been a successful businessman for much of his life. Others point out that bankruptcy has been common among his businesses, alleging his failure. The reality of the Trump bankruptcy rumors is pretty different.
Personal and corporate bankruptcy can bring welcome relief in a time when debts become too much. If you have questions about your debts or the bankruptcy process, contact Northwest Debt Relief Law Firm today at (206) 488-0555.
Trump Bankruptcy Rumors
It has been claimed that Trump has filed for bankruptcy many times over the years. Although he has never filed for personal bankruptcy, several of his companies have utilized bankruptcy to reorganize debts or obtain better terms on those debts.
Memes regarding Trump’s bankruptcies often claim that he has filed for bankruptcy at least four times in the past 15 years. In reality, more than four of his companies have claimed Chapter 11 protection. However, some of those occurred after Trump had already removed himself from the operation of the companies. In most situations, Trump was forced to give up the majority of his ownership in exchange for better debt terms for those companies.
Trump Companies That Have Filed Bankruptcy
Trump Taj Mahal
This casino in Atlantic City opened in 1990, being completed with more than $675 million in bonds that had 14 percent interest rates. Less than a year later, the Trump Taj Mahal had $3 billion in debt. To keep the business in operation, in 1991, Trump’s company filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy and agreed to give up half his ownership, sell his Trump Shuttle airline and his Trump Princess yacht, and set a limit on his personal spending. This allowed the company to attain lower interest rate loans with additional time for repayment.
Trump’s Castle and Trump Plaza Casinos
In 1992, these two Atlantic City hotel-casinos filed a Chapter 11 Trump bankruptcy. Both had millions in debt, and Trump agreed to give up half of his shares of the companies for more favorable term on loans.
Trump Plaza Hotel
Also in 1992, Trump filed bankruptcy for this New York hotel. Again, Trump had to give up nearly half of his ownership in the property to obtain better terms on loans and debts.
Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts
In 2004, Trump sought Chapter 11 protection for this hotel and casino that had $1.8 billion in debt. He reduced his ownership from 40 percent to 27 percent to obtain more favorable lending terms.
Trump Entertainment Resorts
Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts was renamed Trump Entertainment Resorts (TER) after its 2004 bankruptcy. However, in 2009, TER obtained Chapter 11 protection with more than $1.2 billion in debt.
Bankruptcy Is Not Necessarily Failure
Many people who disagree with Trump’s politics have pointed to his business bankruptcies as evidence that he is a “failure.”
However, bankruptcy, especially for companies, is not always a failure. Chapter 11 bankruptcy allows companies to reorganize debts and obtain better repayment terms instead of completely going under. In most cases, Trump bankruptcy is identified by seeking better debt and loan terms instead of ending a business.
In reality, a Trump bankruptcy is carefully using Chapter 11 to benefit the business. Trump has claimed many times that he has not failed, and instead he has “used the laws to corporate advantage.”
Most of Trump’s companies that have stumbled end up successfully in operation later.
A Bankruptcy Attorney Can Help You
If your debts are becoming overwhelming, you may look at Trump bankruptcy as an example of how you can achieve success after unmanageable debt. A skilled bankruptcy lawyer can evaluate your situation and help you through the process. Call us today at (206) 488-0555.
The post The Truth About Trump Bankruptcy appeared first on Portland Bankruptcy Attorney | Northwest Debt Relief.

By GINIA BELLAFANTE 
Last spring, Bhairavi Desai, a middle-aged woman without a driver’s license and thus an unlikely leader for thousands of mostly male drivers in the world’s largest market for hired vehicles, delivered emotional testimony in front of New York City’s Taxi & Limousine Commission about the mounting existential difficulties in her field.
The executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, Ms. Desai had been a labor activist for 21 years but she had never seen anything like the despair she was witnessing now — the bankruptcies, foreclosures and eviction notices plaguing drivers who were calling her with questions about how to navigate homelessness and paralyzing depression.
“Half my heart is just crushed,’’ she said, “and the other half is on fire.”
The economic hardship that Uber and its competitors had inflicted on conventional drivers in New York and London and other cities had become overwhelming. For decades there had been no more than approximately 12,000 to 13,000 taxis in New York but now there were myriad new ways to avoid public transportation, in some cases with ride-hailing services like Via that charged little more than $5 to travel in Manhattan. In 2013, there were 47,000 for-hire vehicles in the city. Now there were more than 100,000, approximately two-thirds of them affiliated with Uber.
While Uber has sold that “disruption” as positive for riders, for many taxi workers, it has been devastating. Between 2013 and 2016, the gross annual bookings of full-time yellow-taxi drivers in New York, working during the day when fares are typically highest, fell from $88,000 a year to just over $69,000. Medallions, which grant the right to operate a taxi in New York City, were now depreciating assets and drivers who had borrowed money to pay for them, once a sound investment strategy, were deeply in debt. Ms. Desai was routinely seeing grown men cry and she had become increasingly concerned about the possibility that they would begin taking their lives.
On Monday morning, Doug Schifter, a livery driver in his early 60s, killed himself with a shotgun in front of City Hall in Lower Manhattan, having written a lengthy Facebook post several hours earlier laying out the structural cruelties that had left him in such dire circumstance. He was now sometimes forced to work more than 100 hours a week to survive he said; when he had started out in the 1980s a 40-hour week was fairly typical. He blamed politicians — mayors Michael R. Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo — and their acquiescence to the rich for permitting so many cars to flood the streets. He blamed the Taxi Commission for the fines and hassles it imposed.
He had lost his health insurance and accrued credit card debt and he would no longer work for “chump change,’’ preferring, he said, to die in the hope that his sacrifice would draw attention to what drivers, too often unable to feed their families now, were enduring. He had forecast all of this doom in columns he had written for a trade publication called Black Car News, he wrote, but few had listened to him.
Implicit in his testament was the anger he felt over the de-professionalization of his life’s work. Mr. Schifter had driven more than five million miles throughout his tenure, through five hurricanes and 50 snowstorms. He had chauffeured celebrities and worn a suit. He was not driving a car to supplement the income he was getting from his crepe business and he was not trying to make a little extra money for massage. He was not a participant in the gig economy; he was a casualty of it.
For at least a century, the suicide as spectacle, prompted by a reversal of fortune, has typically been the practice of the wealthy. In the months after Wall Street’s crash in 1929, four people threw themselves out windows in New York (leading to the folklore that there had been many, many more such deaths). Decades later, Bernie Madoff’s son Mark hanged himself from a dog leash in his SoHo apartment. In 2016, Sanjay Valvani, a hedge fund manager accused of insider trading, slashed his throat in the bedroom of his Brooklyn townhouse, to much sensation in the tabloid and financial press. Poverty too often kills you without making you try.
For taxi drivers staring down an even bleaker future of driverless cars at a moment when Washington considers a weekly paycheck bump of $1.50 an occasion to break out the layer cake, it is hard to see where the metaphoric Prozac will come from.
The problems facing the city’s taxi drivers have become so bad, Ms. Desai said, that even on New Year’s Eve many complained that they roamed around unable to pick up fares. At about that time she had received a call from a woman who runs a community radio station in the Bronx, with an audience made up mostly of Dominican livery drivers. Two drivers that the host knew of had killed themselves and other drivers were on the show talking about the isolation and fear they saw all around them.
In the days preceding his death, Mr. Schifter wrote about his decreasing faith in our politics and about his commitments to his spiritual life. “Forget the cliché you only live once it is not true,” he said in a Facebook post. “The clues are all about you if you take the time to seek them.”
Copyright 2018 The New York Times Company.  All rights reserved.

Every chapter 13 case has creditors – perhaps secured against a car or unsecured, such as a credit card or medical bill.  Assuming creditors want to receive payment in your chapter 13 case they are normally required to file a Proof of Claim that details the debt and attaches proof of the debt.
Each creditor listed in your bankruptcy will receive a form they can fill out on-line or by paper.  This form is referred to as a Proof of Claim and must be filed with the Bankruptcy Court on a registry of claims.  You can obtain a copy of the registry from your attorney or the Bankruptcy Court.
Who gets paid in a bankruptcy?
December 1, 2017 there were some new rules governing the filing of proof of claim forms.  Bankruptcy Rule 3001 details the deadlines and requirements for filing a proof of claim.  Bankruptcy Rule 3002 describes the requirements for filing a proof of claim or interest. Bankruptcy Rule 3002.1 explains the process for filing a claim secured by a claim or interest in the Debtor’s principal residence. Bankruptcy Rule 3007 explains the process for objecting to claims.
The Debtor may file a proof of claim for those important creditors who failed to do so (such as a taxing authority). Bankruptcy Rule 3004 – gives the option for the debtor or trustee to file a proof of claim upon the expiration of the deadline for the creditor to file the claim.  This can be important if the debtor owes back taxes and the taxing authority has not filed a claim.  Remember the trustee will pay based on the filed claims, not the debtor’s schedules of what they owe.
Obviously there are many more rules governing claims or the effect of a claim, so it is important that you discuss claims filed by your creditors, or not filed.

The post Proof of Claims in a Chapter 13 Bankruptcy appeared first on Diane L. Drain - Phoenix Bankruptcy & Foreclosure Attorney.