All About Credit Score

Recently released numbers on personal bankruptcy filings show that April’s numbers were down from both March 2011 and April 2010, more or less following the trends that experts have predicted for the remainder of this year. Here’s a closer look at the specifics, and what this means for you.

• The 21 business days in April saw 130,000 total bankruptcy filings, which comes to 6,177 filings per business day.
• The number of filings shows a decline of 2.9 percent from March, and 7.1 percent from April 2010.
• So far this year, filings have decreased each month at a rate somewhere between 5.6 percent and 8.2 percent compared to 2010 numbers.
• In the past 12 months, 4.9 in 1,000 people have filed bankruptcy petitions. The

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Tags: April, Bankruptcy Filings

Filing for bankruptcy protection is most likely the last thing anyone wants to do, but understanding when you are in need of protection is really rather easy. Becoming bankrupt is a black and white experience much more than it is a gray one. As a general rule of thumb, you are completely financially bankrupt if your current sustainable income plus any cash reserves will not pay all of your living expenses, pay interest on outstanding loans, and reduce some of your principal on those loans while paying on them for five years. Depending on which state you live, this definition of bankruptcy should not include any of your retirement moneys as cash reserves. Paying off debts for five years is chosen because five years is the maximum legal number of years a United States Bankruptcy Court allows an individual to work their way out of bankruptcy.

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Tags: Bankruptcy Protection, Protection

If you’re facing foreclosure, and you can’t seem to strike a deal with your lender, filing bankruptcy may be able to help.

If you fall behind on your mortgage payments, your lender may take steps to foreclose on the property – meaning it may take back your home and sell the property at a public auction.

The foreclosure process doesn’t happen overnight. In Colorado, a foreclosure typically starts after you fall behind on your payments for at least two months, and often three or four. This window of opportunity (commonly the reason behind a “strategic default”) will provide some time for you try alternate methods, such as loan forbearance, a short sale, or a deed in lieu of foreclosure.

If you’ve already tried these options, filing bankruptcy may provide another option to avoid or stall foreclosure. Here are some

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Tags: Help, Help Foreclosure

Many Americans currently considering bankruptcy are in financial trouble partly because of the struggling housing market. Underwater mortgages (those in which the homeowner owes more than the home’s current value) are a reality for as many as 28 percent of American homeowners.

Even though bankruptcy law prohibits the court from modifying the terms of a primary mortgage, some bankruptcy lawyers have found a legal way to help their clients stay in their home and avoid foreclosure.

Unsecured Second Mortgages

Here’s the process some bankruptcy petitioners are following to help ease their mortgage debt:

• File for Chapter 13 bankruptcy: Entering a Chapter 13 case means that the filer agrees to a three- to five-year repayment plan in which she will catch up on past-due debts.
• Petition the court to declare a second mortgage unsecured debt: Filers who have second mortgages that, combined with their primary mortgages, exceed the value of their home’s current value, may be able to make this move. A ban

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Tags: Mortgages

All of us have heard the horror stories of bill collectors and their willingness to harass debtors. Some of us may have even been a party to such harassment, but when harassment is against the law, just how do bill collectors seem to get away with it so often? Well, there is a legal problem with bill collections providing a gray area in the law enabling bill collectors to take liberties with their words.

In an attempt to regulate the collections industry, Congress passed the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) in 1978 as Title VIII of the Consumer Protection Act. Its purposes was to eliminate abusive practices in the collection of consumer debts, to promote fair debt collection, and to provide consumers with an avenue for disputing and obtaining validation of debt information in order to ensure the informations accuracy.

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Tags: Bill, Bill Collections