Protecting Your Rights And Your Future

Bankruptcy gives consumer control in resolving debt problems

| Jan 14, 2016 | Personal Bankruptcy

It is frustrating for many consumers in Arkansas when a bank makes extraordinary monetary demands when the borrower is out of a job or laid up with a disability. Lower income in the form of unemployment or other benefits won’t keep a family financially healthy and can be the ticket to financial insolvency. However, bankruptcy attorneys universally report that their clients have expressed their desire and need to pay their bills despite suffering unfortunate setbacks.

That makes it rather futile to try and understand the policy of a creditor who demands thousands up front from a struggling consumer who wants a break to get caught up. The creditor knows about the bad luck that the consumer has suffered. The unreasonable demands for instant and full, or near-full, payment seems to be an action not geared toward the best interests of all parties.

In any event, the unyielding attitude of many creditors have landed many a consumer in Bankruptcy Court, where for the first time the debtor discovers that the creditor does not have absolute power to impose its every demand. For unsecured debt, it is quite the contrary. Debts like credit cards, medical bills, and personal loans with no collateral attached will fall quickly and forever in the bankruptcy proceedings.

There are reports every day of debtors obtaining credit for various purposes relatively quickly after finishing a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, including in Arkansas. The individual or married couple struggling to make impossible payments to creditors may want to stand back and look at the facts. If there are no permanent dire results of filing the bankruptcy, and if it is offered by the federal government as a way for citizens to get a fresh start, why would those in deep and unrelenting debt not go forward with it? There are many answers to the question, but each consumer confronting the problem of overwhelming unsecured debt may want to revisit any decisions previously made to reject the bankruptcy remedy.

Source: The Huffington Post, “My Bank Won’t Work With Me So I Can Pay My Debt“, Steve Rhode, Jan. 13, 2016

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