The Top 13 Reasons to File Chapter 13

1-Your Home:
Mortgage Payments. Chapter 13 can give you up to five years to pay back mortgage arrears. Most of the time, you can pay back your mortgage without any interest or penalties.

Foreclosure. If your house is in foreclosure, you can usually stop the foreclosure.

Sheriff’s Sale. If your house is listed for a Sheriff’s Sale, you can usually stop that Sheriff’s Sale and get up to five years to pay back your mortgage arrears. In certain limited situations, you can still save your home even after a Sheriff’s sale has taken place.

Landlord. If your landlord is taking you to court to try to evict you because you are behind on your rent, you can usually file a Chapter 13 before your court hearing is held.

2- Your Car:
Vehicle Repo. If your car has been repossessed and hasn’t yet been sold at an auction, you can probably get your car back and pay it off in five years or less, often at a reduced interest rate, and often also reduce your principal balance due to the finance company.
Monthly Car Payments. If you have owned your car for more than 2 ½ years (910 days) we may be able to reduce your monthly car payments. If you qualify, you could save a lot of money and can substantially reduce your interest rate and principal balance due.

Interest Rate Reduction. If you are paying high interest on a car loan, you can generally reduce your car loan interest rate to somewhere in the vicinity of 6%.

3. Your Personal Property: If the Sheriff has scheduled a sale of some of your personal assets such as a car, household items, or other personal property, the Sheriff’s Sale can be stopped by filing Chapter 13.

4. Your credit card debt: Chapter 13 is an excellent way to wipe out all of your credit card debt and to stop those bill collectors and collection agencies from constantly calling you.

5. Your Medical bills, dental bills, doctor bills, hospital bills: You can wipe out all sorts of medical bills that are not covered by insurance, and you can be released of all responsibility for those bills.        

6. Your Utility bills such as gas, electric, telephone, cable, and cell phone bills:
a. You can wipe out your utility bills. A public utility such as Atlantic City Electric, Verizon, and South Jersey Gas must continue to provide you with service in the future.
b. Cell phone bills are a little bit different. Cell phone bills can be wiped out, but cell phone companies are not legally required to continue to provide cell phone time for you. However, other providers will give you service, and you can also keep your current cell phone number.

7. Your Personal Loans: If you have an unsecured loan from a place such as Beneficial, Household Finance, CitiFinancial, American General, or similar unsecured loans, you can normally wipe them out in Chapter 13.The result may be different if the lender has taken a security interest in property that you own.

8. Your Salary: - STOP wage executions. Chapter 13 automatically prohibits and stops most wage executions.  If there has been a wage execution against you that has taken $600 or more out of your salary over the 90 days immediately prior to your Chapter 13 filing date, we can often get that money back for you. Please make sure to let us know if this applies to you.

9. Your Income Taxes that are more than 3 years old and that were filed more than 3 years ago: Chapter 13 can often help you wipe out certain income tax bills owed to either the IRS, or to the State of New Jersey.  We need to specifically review each situation before we can advise our client whether or not his/her income taxes can legally be wiped out in a chapter 13. If the taxes you owe must be paid and cannot be wiped out, you can often pay back those taxes over a period of five years, without interest, and without paying any additional interest or additional penalties.

10. Frozen bank accounts: A lot of times creditors freeze your bank account and you start bouncing checks. If that money has not been turned over to the creditor by the bank, in many cases we can get the frozen funds released back to you.

11. Your driver’s license: If unpaid surcharges are the only thing that is keeping you from getting your driver’s license, you can often get your driver’s license back by filing for Chapter 13.  New Jersey Motor Vehicle surcharges can usually be discharged in Chapter 13.

12. Your Legal fees: You can usually wipe out legal fees that you owe to an attorney for services   performed.

13. Court Fines: If you have Court fines, in many cases you can pay them back over the course of five years in your Chapter 13 plan.