Are you stuck paying tens of thousands of dollars in back taxes and penalties from old tax debts? If your tax debt does not fall into any of the following categories, then it is very likely your Woodlands Bankruptcy Attorney can get the debt discharged in Chapter 7 bankruptcy:

1. Any tax for which a return was not filed, for which a fraudulent return was filed, or which the debtor willfully attempted to evade;

2. Any tax with respect to which a late return was filed within two years before filing for bankruptcy;

3. Income Taxes:
a – for which a return was last due within 3 years of filing for bankruptcy; or
b – assessed within 240 days before filing for bankruptcy; or
c – not yet assess, but assessable after filing bankruptcy.

4. Property taxes assessed before filing and payable without penalty less than one year before filing.

If your tax debt does fall into one of the categories described above, then you may be eligible to discharge your debt at a later date provided you did not willfully attempt to evade the tax.

Contact The Shea Law Firm at (832) 592-7913 if you need to speak with an experienced bankruptcy lawyer about how to lose your tax debt, credit card debt, and debt from medical bills.

Student loan debt is often difficult to get discharged by the Houston bankruptcy court. There are so many factors involved that even if you did not satisfy all of the criteria in your original bankruptcy case you may become eligible for discharge years later based on events such as unemployment, reduced income, or disability.

Fortunately, if your facts and circumstances change over the years since your Chapter 7 discharge your Woodlands Bankruptcy Attorney can file additional adversary proceedings to continue to pursue discharge without going through an entirely new bankruptcy provided the student loans existed at the time your previous bankruptcy petition was filed. If you have student loans that you received after your last bankruptcy petition was filed then they would not be eligible to be included in this special procedure.

Call The Shea Law Firm at (832) 592-7913 if you need an experienced bankruptcy lawyer.

Within 30 days of filing your petition for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy relief your bankruptcy attorney must file your Statement of Intentions with the court. If your Meeting of Creditors is scheduled earlier than 30 days after your case is filed then you must file the Statement of Intentions before that meeting.

The Statement of Intentions applies to all real or personal property you own that serves as collateral for a debt.

For each piece of property you must state:

1. whether you will surrender the property or keep the property;
2. whether you will redeem the property;
3. whether you will reaffirm the debt secured by the property; and
4. whether the property will be claimed as exempt.

If you are not sure how to answer these important questions then speak with a Woodlands Bankruptcy Attorney today about representing you through the bankruptcy process to protect your rights and property.

Follow-Through

You are generally required to follow-through on your intention for each piece of property within 30 days after the first date scheduled for the Meeting of Creditors. If you intend to surrender the property that means being prepared to turn the property over. If you intend to redeem the property that means having the funds necessary to perform the redemption. If you intend to reaffirm the debt that means having a reaffirmation agreement in place with the creditor.

Intentional or not, some people that start that bankruptcy process try to hide assets. This is usually done based on the belief that if you don’t tell anyone about it they won’t find it. That is a flawed assumption for many reasons which we will get into another time, but for now let’s focus on the bottom line. Are you really protecting your assets or risking assets when you attempt to hide something?

Myth – you have to lose all of your property in bankruptcy.

Fact – you only lose your non-exempt property through the bankruptcy process.

The first rule of preserving property with an exemption is that your Woodlands Bankruptcy Attorney has to know it exists. If your bankruptcy attorney does not about a specific piece of property and does not set aside an exemption for it then you risk losing it to the bankruptcy trustee. Clearly this is not the result most people intend which is why it is absolutely critical that you tell your bankruptcy attorney everything that you own.

Many of the people I represent through the bankruptcy process can keep all of their property with strategic use of their bankruptcy property exemptions. Anything they do not tell me about at the outset may be impossible to protect later on. This is why you do not attempt to hide assets.

Student loans are a booming industry. The government guarantees the loan so schools everywhere saw a wonderful opportunity to raise tuition to the sky. And since it is not easy to discharge a student loan in bankruptcy lenders were almost always standing by ready to lend unsuspecting students large sums of money on a degree that may not be worth the price paid. What can you do if you are being buried by student loans?

It is not easy to get a student loan discharged in bankruptcy. Not easy at all, but it can be done under very specific conditions. It all comes down to the judge’s definition of “undue hardship.”

“Undue Hardship” is the legal standard used in the Bankruptcy Code to determine if a student loan should be discharged in a bankruptcy proceeding. However, Congress never defined what they meant by “undue hardship” so each judge has been left to create their own definition. Almost everyone agrees that an undue hardship is something more than regular hardship, but there are differences of opinion to how onerous the hardship must be.

Most courts have relied on the Brunner test in evaluating undue hardship. Under the Brunner test you may prevail on an undue hardship claim if: Read more…