You have worked diligently to get your case filed with our firm. But then, now what? After your case is filed, you must complete the following steps:
1.) Once your case is filed, you will receive an email from our office. The email will give you a case number and remind you to complete your online debtor education class at www.debtorcc.org. Please go ahead and complete your 2nd online bankruptcy class. Failure to complete this class in a timely manner will result in dismissal of your bankruptcy case. Although you have ample time to complete the course, your goal should be to complete it before the Meeting of Creditors.
2.) If you intend on keeping your car and house after your bankruptcy case; please continue to make your car payment and mortgage payment. You may not receive a car or mortgage statement while your bankruptcy case is pending. That is because the automatic stay actually forbids any efforts to collect on a debt. So don’t wait for a bill that is not coming, make sure you reach out to your lender and make your payments on time.
3.) Prepare for the meeting of creditors. The date and time for your meeting of creditors will be emailed to you when your case is filed. You will have approximately 1 month to make preparations. The meeting of creditors can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 3 hours to complete. Most meetings are completed within an hour. But don’t worry, they will not be asking you questions for that long. If your meeting of creditors takes 1 to 3 hours, its because the trustee is running late and is asking other people too many questions. Once the trustee calls your case, you will be done in 5 minutes. Please review our post on “What happens AT the Meeting of Creditors?“
4.) If you receive any phone calls from creditors, please inform them that you have filed bankruptcy, given them your case number, and inform them that you have a bankruptcy attorney and give them our firm information.
Up to this point, your case will have been filed and you should have completed your debtor education class and also completed your Meeting of Creditors. Check out our blog post on “What happens AFTER the Meeting of Creditors?”
