Bankruptcy Indiana

As a debt consolidation lawyer and Indiana lawyer for bankruptcy, I wear quite a number of different hats in the course of my work.  Almost always, though, helping clients file personal bankruptcy in Indiana comes around to preparing for "meetings" and "tests".

When I say "meetings, I mean the creditors' meeting which takes place within 20 to 40 days of the time a bankruptcy in Indiana is filed.  The meeting is presided over by a trustee appointed by the bankruptcy court, either in an office or a room in the courthouse.  All the creditors to whom the debtor owes money are invited. (In reality, it's rare for creditors to actually show up at the meeting.)  You attend this meeting along with your Indiana bankruptcy attorney.  The whole idea is to give the creditors a chance to ask questions about the bankruptcy paperwork you've turned in.  While the creditors may or may not choose to attend the meeting, the debtor must attend.

Any discussion about what debtors can reasonably be expected to pay towards their debt comes down to the "test", meaning the Indiana means test. This is the measure the bankruptcy court uses to determine of someone's eligible to file bankruptcy in Indiana, and to decide if Chapter 7 bankruptcy is available to them, or whether they need to file under Chapter 13 bankruptcy law in Indiana. 

As an Indiana lawyer for bankruptcy, then, I'm always working with the numbers.  Where do the number standards come from?  First of all, they are national standards, sometimes adjusted for regional differences, and they originate from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Expenditure Survey.  Periodically, of course, those numbers are adjusted for inflation. The numbers are stated in terms of number of people in the family.  There are specific numbers for a one-person household, a two, a three, or a four-person household, and then an amount to be added for each additional person over four.

You might say that one of the main tasks that I and my colleagues in the four Mark Zuckerberg bankruptcy law offices have in the course of our work is numbers.  We help gather numbers, we need to know the current laws concerning those numbers, and then, using the numbers, we prepare the paperwork which categorizes and analyzes those numbers for each client.  In fact, one of the Columbus bankruptcy lawyers from my office there pointed out that, even if clients aren't filing bankruptcy in Indiana, and we're negotiating with their mortgage companies to help stop foreclosure, or maybe we're offering payday loan help, it's still all in the numbers.

After more than two decades of being an Indianapolis bankruptcy attorney, I agree and disagree.  Yes, "The Meeting "and "The Test" involve numbers.  All of our work involves numbers.  What's it's really all about, for me, though is not the numbers, but the people.  Our greatest satisfaction comes from turning what look like negative numbers into a positive - the chance for a fresh financial start for real people in Indiana!