Your bankruptcy lawyer’s constant requests for information probably frustrate you.

Once you’ve gotten past the whole, “should I or shouldn’t I,” stage of things, you think it will go pretty quickly. Not so.

In fact, the major chunk of your bankruptcy lawyer’s work is done before the court gets involved.

There are income and expense statements to be provided, financial disclosures to be made, and asset valuations to be completed (that collection of coffee tables books? Yup, we need to figure out how much they’re worth).

We need to account for your financial life in the time leading up to when your bankruptcy case is filed.

And once that’s done, we need to review your debts – all of them – to make sure we time things perfectly.

File No Bankruptcy Before Its Time

Back in the 1970s there was a television commercial for Paul Masson wine. In it, the actor proclaims that the company, “will sell no wine before its time.”

The point was that things needed to be perfect before the wine was released to the public.

So, too, with bankruptcy.

File too soon and you’re taking a risk that things won’t turn out the way you’d hoped.

Wait too long and there’s a chance that you will have wasted precious time in your quest to get out of debt.

Information Needs To Be Fresh

Your income for bankruptcy purposes has to reflect the money you’ve made over the past six months. That means you’ve got to have your most recent paystubs and income information, as well as the current value of what you own (including bank account balances).

If we need to wait to file your bankruptcy case, your information may get stale. In fact, it gets stale every month.

Stale information isn’t useful when it comes to your bankruptcy.

We, As Bankruptcy Lawyers, Repeat Ourselves

Every month until your bankruptcy case is filed brings with it a fresh request for information.

Paystubs. Operating reports for your business. Bank account statements.

It annoys you to have to send us documents every month.

It makes us feel bad to ask you for the same things over and over again, but we’ve got no choice.

We’re On Your Side

We could file your bankruptcy case immediately, but sometimes it’s just not possible.

Timing is important to ensure that you’re protected, and that we get it right the first time.

Part of the reason you hire us is because you respect our opinion and trust our base of knowledge.

Let’s keep working together to make your bankruptcy case a smooth and successful process.