Thursday, October 31, 2013

Bankruptcy Unaffordable To Some People

By Cornelius Nunev


The crisis of bankruptcies in the past couple of years has slowed somewhat, as fewer people are filing for Chapter 7 or Chapter 11 protection. However, a number of people are not filing for bankruptcy because they can't pay for to do so.

Bankruptcy not as often

The meltdown of the financial system and housing marketplace along with the following boost in joblessness between 2006 and 2008 led to a lot of people filing for personal bankruptcy. In 2008, according to the Deseret News, national bankruptcy filings increased 33 percent over 2007, which increased another 32 percent from 2008 to 2009.

Fortunately, the national rate of bankruptcy increased much less from 2009 to 2010, when the 1.55 million filings for Chapters 11 and 7 marked a rise of only 8 percent. In 2011, according to the New York Times, the number of countrywide bankruptcies fell 12 per-cent, to 1.4 million.

The positive data is not really all that optimistic when you consider the individuals are not declaring bankruptcies because they just cannot afford to, according to CNN.

Money needed to file

The National Bureau of Economic Research found in a recent report that the typical cost of filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy is at least $1,500, which is estimated to put the cost of declaring bankruptcy out of reach for anywhere from 200,000 to 1 million peo-ple nationwide. The report's authors believe that tax returns can be used to file for Chapter 7, the most common form of bankruptcy.

The majority of the cost goes to bankruptcy attorneys. Of the $1,500 total, $300 is the mandatory federal court fee for filing to declare bankruptcy. When individuals file for bank-ruptcy, they are required to take debtor's education courses and receive pre-bankruptcy counseling, the charges for which add up to about $85 in most cases. That still leaves more than $1,000, most of which will go to a lawyer.

A less costly way

The 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act were produced to be able to keep customers from filing bankruptcies which were frivolous. Critics are upset though, and they say that the law just makes it impossible for the poor who need bankruptcy to file for it. The legal work and additional charges are there as part of the law to make it harder to file for bankruptcy. A lawyer is required for almost all of the charges.

There are some attorneys who do not need payment to do the case. There are many places you can go to find these attorneys. If a person's income is 150 percent or less of the federal poverty level, than a person can waive filing charges.




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