Mr. Bitter

I have begun the process of filing for bankruptcy. From what I read, this is happening to a lot of people so I thought I’d share my experiences here.

Bankruptcy is a daunting process and the credit card companies had Congress pass them a wish list bill a couple of years ago intended to make it tougher to file for Chapter 7. The biggest effect so far is probably the provision that makes lawyers responsible for the information in the paperwork. As a result, some lawyers have stopped doing bankruptcies and others have raised their fees. So, us poor people can’t afford a lawyer.

That would be irony. And not in the Alanis Morissette sense.

I called Legal Aid here in San Francisco and they don’t handle bankruptcy. I called the San Francisco Bar Association and they have a program where you meet with a lawyer for $25. Unfortunately, this is a kind of lottery. You either get somebody who is interested in taking your case pro bono or you don’t. I got a Russian guy who ranted in the middle about what a waste of time pro bono cases were. Uh, yeah, thanks a lot. Why exactly are you volunteering your time for this program?
So I’m on my own. I checked out a couple of Nolo books from the library and am in the process of reading them. If you ever have legal problems, I can’t recommend Nolo enough. They publish books about the law that are easy to read and easy to understand. I was really worried that I’d have to represent myself but I’m getting a little more confident.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 2nd, 2007 at 2:31 am and is filed under Bankruptcy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.