Bankruptcy Indiana

Today's bankruptcy blog reader's question hints at a very sad picture - a home going up for public sale.  While I'm not familiar with the details of this particular case, as an Indianapolis bankruptcy lawyer for so many years, I'm unfortunately all too familiar with the general picture.

A "Notice of Public Auction Sale" has been posted, perhaps because the reader's home was seized for nonpayment of federal taxes. Perhaps it's the mortgage lender that has foreclosed on the property.  In the course of a bankruptcy, the bankruptcy court may employ an auctioneer to manage a public sale of a property. In any case, it appears that, for this reader, there's a "Sheriff's sale" going on.  The frightening answer to the reader's question about when eviction might take place is - "Soon, very soon, perhaps within the week of the public sale."

It's rather rare, in my experience offering bankruptcy services in Indiana for more than twenty years, for the bankruptcy court to force the public sale of a home if the debtor files bankruptcy.  Remember, in the new bankruptcy laws in Indiana there are exemptions (In fact, I helped write the exemptions portion of the Indiana bankruptcy laws), and one of those is the Homestead Exemption, allowing Indiana residents to keep their homes if they have little or no "equity" in those homes.

Apparently, in this blog reader's situation, the exemption did not apply and eviction looms.  The reality is that, with an eviction on his record, our reader is likely to encounter difficulties in renting an apartment. This is unfortunately true not only in the "big city", but in the smaller cities and towns as well, as the Anderson, Bloomington, and Columbus bankruptcy lawyers who work in the Mark Zuckerberg offices tell me. 

As any doctor will attest, preventive medicine is the best kind, and it's no different in my professional as a debt consolidation lawyer and consumer bankruptcy specialist in Indiana. Whenever possible, I like to spend time talking with clients about debt management, and about individual bankruptcy in Indiana.  I help clients negotiate with lenders, and represent them in arranging mortgage modifications.  Sometimes the best advice for a client is to let the home go into foreclosure given financial circumstances that have changed for the worse.  Never is it a pleasant picture when someone is in danger of immediate eviction from a home.