Adrian Needs Your Advice. Just Out of Jail, Not Prison.

Posted by Steve Rhode as Uncategorized

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Adrian wrote in looking for advice.

I am a 27yo male who got involved in a bad relationship with the wrong older woman. I paid for it with my mental sanity (from which I am recovering), a stint in jail (not prison), and my financial well being (i have not worked for years now).

I am trying to rebuild my life, am now married and a father. I would like to know if bankruptcy is a viable option for me? If so, how should I go about the process?

What kind of attorney should I seek and involve myself with? Anything I should look out for? If and when I do engage in this process, what should I do to attempt to get back to where I was before my private “war”???

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Adrian,

Wow! It sounds like you’ve lived through some very difficult times. And while it sounds like things have been a mess in the past, maybe today marks the first day of a new financial life.

Even though you have lived a lifetime, you are still a young man with a long life ahead of you, as long as you stay away from older women, apparently.

Now that you are a father and married, you’ve got responsibilities to take care of. First, is to be able to do the best you can to provide for your wife and children. Secondly, you have a responsibility to deal with your past financial mess. And is bankruptcy the answer? It is certainly an answer.

Despite what you might have heard, bankruptcy remains a legal and viable solution for many people with insurmountable bad debt. The best use of bankruptcy is to get a fresh start on your life by breaking the bondage of an unrecoverable past financial life.

In a perfect world we’d all be able to repay what we owe, all the time. But when lenders and credit card companies lend, they do so absolutely. meaning, they lend with an expectation of getting paid each month until the debt is repaid, no matter what your personal circumstances are.

Things happen in life and life is not absolute. So when you take into account, mental illness, Mississippi River floods, hurricanes, terrorists, a slow economy, and everything else that can cause a loss of income, it is no wonder that people often find themselves in financial trouble with creditors expecting that same monthly payment, without fail.

I always suggest that people should contact a bankruptcy lawyer, not with the intention of going bankrupt, but to gather information and ask questions. You can find a local bankruptcy attorney online here.

Once you’ve asked your questions and become more informed about bankruptcy and how it might apply to you, then you can make some good choices about if you want to move forward with bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy is a pretty standard process so the biggest deciding factor about which bankruptcy attorney to use is based on communications. Make sure you feel comfortable with your attorney and their staff. You want to feel comfortable in calling to ask questions through the process.

As far as rebuilding your financial life you should do the following two things after your bankruptcy discharge.

First, after your discharge you should get a copy of your combined 3-in-1 credit report and make sure that all the debts that you included in your bankruptcy are now showing on all three credit reports as being included in the bankruptcy. It is not unusual to find debts that were included still being reported as outstanding collection accounts. That’s a bad thing. You can fix that by following the dispute procedure instruction that come with your 3-in-1 credit report you order.

Second, as crazy as this sounds, I need for you to get back in the credit game. You can’t improve a history of bad credit with no credit. So you need to start using credit again, and you will be able to get a credit card by applying for one these cards available for those with poor credit.

This will all take a little bit of time for you to accomplish but there is hope, it can be fixed and you have a good chance for a bright future.

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Steve