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ing change — divorce, illness, death — may prompt them to consider filing for either Chapter 7, which excuses nearly all their debts, or Chapter 13, in which they’ll need to have money beyond living expenses to start a creditor repayment plan, said Patricia A. Woodward, a Warrenton bankruptcy attorney.
“There’s a very thin margin between ‘able to make it’ and ‘not able to make it,’ where able means having enough money to make payments and having enough for budgeted annual and semi-annual expenses,” she said.
According to Consumer Bankruptcy News, a publication for bankruptcy practitioners, Americans received three billion unsolicited credit offers in 1997. People who receive these offers may not be in the best financial shape to handle the responsibility. And credit providers, Woodward said, don’t always trumpet the consequences of missed or late payments — higher interest rates and hefty fees.
Bankruptcy specialists and financial counselors note there are several
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