What do I need to do to start a Chapter 7 bankruptcy?
The first thing you need to do, and the best way to help yourself, is to put all of your financial information and documents in one place. We cannot emphasize enough how important it is that you get all of your documentation in one place, whether that is a file folder, a USB drive, or storage in the cloud. No bankruptcy attorney can file without having the proper documentation. This is one of the major reasons why a bankruptcy will fail: because the client failed to do their homework for the bankruptcy. Your attorney is very unlikely to be able to do all of this leg work for you. While an attorney can gather a lot of financial information about you, it is not possible to easily gather all of your financial information from an attorney’s desk. We recommend that you gather, at the very least, your last three years of tax returns, your bills, bank account statements, mortgage statements, vehicle information, credit card statements, loan statements, and a copy of a credit report if you have one. After that, it’s time to talk to an attorney about your Chapter 7 bankruptcy.