Several years ago, a fellow bankruptcy attorney told me that our job as bankruptcy attorneys is to get our clients to tell us everything they know about the “Dairy Queen Act.” “Dairy Queen Law” are all bankruptcy laws that customers learned at the local “Dairy Queen” from friends, family, waitresses, and other customers. We have to get our clients to tell us what “Dairy Queen’s Law” they have learned, and then we as lawyers have to tell them the truth about bankruptcy. Well, here’s a common “Dairy Queen’s Law”, followed by the truth.

Your employer and the local newspaper will be told that you filed for bankruptcy.

When you file a Chapter 7 case, the employer is not notified of the bankruptcy. If you choose to file a Chapter 13 case, you are asking your employer to garnish your wages to pay your creditors under a court-approved Chapter 13 plan that you file. Your employer is notified of the bankruptcy because you request that your wages be garnished. This is one of the many reasons our law firm now attempts to file as many of our cases as Chapter 7 cases.

Our local newspapers do not publish those who have filed for bankruptcy (unless they are Donald Trump, American Airlines, Walt Disney, or similarly famous individuals or companies). In my 30-year bankruptcy practice, the only bankruptcy case that made the local paper was the Chapter 7 case I filed for a local microbrewery. The article was much more about the brewery than the bankruptcy filing.

You have to be very poor to file for bankruptcy

The 2005 amendments to the US Bankruptcy Code made the forms needed to properly file a bankruptcy case very difficult. However, we present cases for very poor people and other “not so poor” people who are in financial difficulty. We offer a free consultation and can help find a solution to your debt problems. Most of our clients believe that they are very distressed when they first walk into our office and leave confident that they have found a solution to their financial problems.

Your credit will be ruined forever.

FAKE! Most of the clients who come to our office have serious financial problems and bankruptcy eliminates those debts and puts them on the path to a fresh start. Most of our Chapter 7 clients finance late-model vehicles while their bankruptcy cases are pending. Working to restore credit after liquidation will allow clients to finance homes beginning two years after the bankruptcy liquidation. Bankruptcy is a solution to a financial problem and often drastically improves our clients’ credit and financial problems.

New laws make it impossible to file for bankruptcy

In 2005, the US Congress made drastic changes to our bankruptcy laws. Unfortunately, the effect of these laws is only to make the price of filing a bankruptcy case more expensive for indebted consumers. The forms that must now be filed when filing a bankruptcy case are very complicated. In fact, I teach continuing legal education classes in which I instruct attorneys and paralegals on how to properly prepare forms to get the best possible outcome for their clients. It is very important that you retain a highly experienced and knowledgeable bankruptcy attorney to represent you in this very complicated area of ​​the law. Millions of Americans filed for bankruptcy before the law changed, and millions are filing now that the new laws have taken effect.