One of the most frightening experiences you can have is realizing you can no longer survive financially in your current state. You may have found that your liabilities exceed your assets, through no fault of your own – for instance, perhaps the state of the economy or of your particular industry has negatively impacted your sales. Filing for Chapter 13 bankruptcy is a viable option for addressing your financial challenges in North Carolina.
What is Chapter 13?
The purpose of a Chapter 13 bankruptcy filing is to restructure your debts into a plan supervised by the court. This move will provide you with protection from actions taken by creditors as well as save you a large amount of money from the total that you currently owe. With this type of bankruptcy filing, it usually takes longer to pay off debts, but you will have extra time to make these payments, and Chapter 13 bankruptcy trustees might be flexible regarding your payment terms. For instance, it might be possible for you to make your payments stretch out, to relinquish a property item on which you are making debt payments or to decrease your payment amounts.
What are some pros of a Chapter 13 bankruptcy filing?
A major benefit of this type of bankruptcy filing is that, after you finish your Chapter 13 repayment plan, individual creditors legally are unable to force you to pay them back in full. In addition, during the time you are making payments, you are able to keep those property items on which you are making payments. Furthermore, the sooner you file for bankruptcy, the sooner you can start to rebuild your credit. Yet another advantage of Chapter 13 is that you can file for this type of bankruptcy repeatedly if financial disasters strike again in the future.
Is Chapter 13 bankruptcy right for me?
Determining whether a bankruptcy filing is appropriate for you can, understandably, be difficult, as filing for Chapter 13 bankruptcy has an impact on your self-image, future credit and reputation. A knowledgeable attorney in North Carolina can help you to decide whether or not to file for bankruptcy protection and then guide you through the filing process, so that you can finally achieve a sense of financial peace in the years to come.
