Bankruptcy

No Decision Is Also a Decision! Bankruptcy 7? 13? Negotiate? Defend Lawsuits? or Nothing. BUT NOTHING IS A DECISION WITH CONSEQUENCES!!!!!

By Joseph McDaniel, Esq.

But I refuse to make decisions for people, and there's a reason for that. It is the same reason that I refuse to use a sales closing technique to make a client hire me.

I don't want buyer's remorse in one of my clients. Or two. Or any.

Now, because this isn't my first bankruptcy rodeo, I can see patterns faster than a layman; and in particular, after studying and researching and racking my brains for thirty years to find solutions to creditor/debtor law problems, I can see the decision tree in a particular set of facts quicker than many non-lawyers. Heck, even quicker than non-bankruptcy lawyers, you know?

Therefore, I often try to make that decision tree available to potential clients. So I'll say, once I understand the facts, that they can either do backflips and qualify for a Chapter 7 (painful, but the backflips'll work), or give up and make horribly high payments to a Chapter 13 trustee for five years, or negotiate with creditors and eat, in all probability, some tax consequences.

I usually don't include "or do nothing and have your earnings and bank accounts garnished, and your cars repossessed, and your house become the subject of a trustee's sale, and your 401(k) diminished by the continued payment from it of minimum credit card payments for whatever tomfool reason you've been doing that", because it isn't polite, and it is so obviously a terrible idea.

But some folks have lived their lives playing a long session of the popular game, "Yes, but....", and that has nothing to do with Oxygen's Glute Magazine.

Instead, at a discussion of the various options available in any context, the hard-core "Yes, but...." player finds some reason that the option can't be accomplished, period.

Once all the options, without exception, are done with, the player has won the game of "Yes, but..." and gets to find another challenger for the title.

My technique for that sort of situation is pretty simple; if I go through the multiple possible techniques for resolving a debt problem and all of them are not possible because....well, because, then I'll refer to three other well-experienced bankruptcy and insolvency lawyers in Arizona.

Heck, it's even possible that one of 'em will know something I don't!

Look, I didn't say it was highly probable. Just possible, right?

NOTHING HERE CONSTITUTES LEGAL ADVICE RE A CHAPTER 7, CHAPTER 13, CHAPTER 11, OR CHAPTER 12. FIND AN ARIZONA BANKRUPTCY LAWYER WHO IS BOARD CERTIFIED IN BANKRUPTCY LAW, AV RATED, AVVO 10 RATED, ON SUPERLAWYERS, OR JUST VERY EXPERIENCED AND A FORMER CHAIR OF SOME BANKRUPTCY SECTION OR COMMITTEE. NOTHING HERE MAY BE USED AS LEGAL ADVICE IN CONNECTION WITH ANY BANKRUPTCY, WHETHER THAT BANKRUPTCY IS IN PHOENIX, GLENDALE, TEMPE, MESA, SCOTTSDALE, OR ANYWHERE ELSE.

Full post as published by Arizona Bankruptcy Attorney Blog on July 09, 2010 (boomark / email).