With a large number of Americans filing for bankruptcy these days, one of the hardest things for these individuals to do is to let go of all the stuff. Many people that ran their credit cards up to the tilt feel that items they bought on credit belong to them. For some reason they have the belief that just because they possess the property, they own it. The bottom line is, if you didn't pay for it, the items don't belong to you unless they were a gift. In this day and age of entitlement many people believe that it's owed to them for some crazy reason.

The twist comes when an individual is filing bankruptcy. Many of these people don't want to disclose all of their property. They think that if they disclose it to the bankruptcy court, the trustee will come and take it. These same individuals are also wary of disclosing their financial situation to their bankruptcy attorney. If they can't disclose all of their financial information to their bankruptcy attorney, the attorney won't be able to help them. By not fully disclosing the individuals entire financial picture to the bankruptcy court they might face the wrath of the bankruptcy judge.

There are many things in a bankruptcy filing that can happen to a debtor for not disclosing property to the court. If an individual decides to try and hide property from the bankruptcy trustee, they just might lose that property. A common mistake made by those filing bankruptcy is forgetting an old savings account. Other items that are commonly forgotten is vacation pay, pension benefits and interest from a life insurance policy. Many of these things have a cash value and the trustee might take them to be divided amongst the creditors all because they weren't listed and are not protected under bankruptcy exemption laws.

Filing bankruptcy requires the debtor to be truthful about their entire financial situation. It's best to disclose everything to the bankruptcy attorney and let them deal with the issue of protecting the property. That of course is why they get paid the big bucks.

Many attorneys complain that their clients have a misconception that they can pick and choose which creditors that they want to include in their bankruptcy filing. Any creditor that is not listed means that the debt will not be discharged and no longer can be discharged in another bankruptcy filing. When it comes to filing bankruptcy, more is better when listing creditors. Just because you list a creditor and they're included in the bankruptcy, doesn't mean you can't pay them back on your own.

People don't understand that nowadays with technology bankruptcy trustees have many ways of finding out information about the debtors. When a debtor decides to not disclose all of their property to the bankruptcy attorney, it might end up nonexempt and in this case lose it. If the client had disclosed it to the bankruptcy attorney, the attorney might have advised the person on delaying filing for bankruptcy or not to file at all if they want to keep that property.

A number of people filing for bankruptcy don't understand the seriousness of hiding assets from the court. The least of these is just having your bankruptcy discharge denied or even worse possible jail time for trying to defraud the court. A bankruptcy attorney will try and work in the best interest for their client and get the maximum benefit out of the bankruptcy filing. It's foolish to not trust the attorney you hired to protect your assets.

The author started FilingBankruptcyNow.Com which is a website that helps individuals with debt problems by putting them in touch with a local bankruptcy attorney that specializes in filing bankruptcy under Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcy. Check our website for more answers to bankruptcy questions and ideas on how to have a debt free future.

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Many people fear filing bankruptcy. They rightfully believe there is a stigma in just filing, never mind in going through the entire process and receiving a "Discharge". Among their concerns is that many people feel their credit rating will suffer significantly if they choose bankruptcy. Oddly enough, for most individuals filing bankruptcy, the bankruptcy may be the only "positive" item on their credit report.

A credit report is a history of how well you have made payments to creditors for the last 10 years. The information is provided to the credit reporting agencies (often called credit bureaus) by certain of your creditors. In addition to the information from creditors, your credit report includes information from the public records and other sources and as a result your it may include information on pending lawsuits, judgments, tax liens overdrawn bank accounts and other information.

Filing a Bankruptcy does not cause information to be removed from your credit report. In fact, in addition to all of the information already on your credit report, once you file bankruptcy your report will show the bankruptcy filing. The advantage to filing bankruptcy from the standpoint of your credit history is that once you complete the bankruptcy processes you will ordinarily receive a "Discharge of Indebtedness" which is a signal to creditors that you no longer owe most of the types of the debts which you owed at the time you filed bankruptcy unless you specifically agreed in writing to continue to pay the debt.

To creditors who may be interested in extending credit to you, this means you are no longer subject to lawsuits, judgements, the possibility of being sued on old debts, you may have been relieved of certain tax debts and may otherwise be experiencing much improved financial health. Under these conditions, even though the credit report looks poor, certain creditors will still consider extending credit because they no longer have to be concerned that your pay check or bank accounts or other financial resources will be interfered with by other creditors, preventing you from having the resources to pay them.

To improve your credit report after bankruptcy:

Once you have completed your bankruptcy, it is likely you will want to take steps to improve your credit. Getting a copy of your credit report is a good starting point. Review the report for inaccuracies. If you find inaccurate information you can generally have it removed by writing a letter to the credit bureau or agencies. Usually sending out letters to all major credit bureaus at the same time is the most effective. Basic information on writing these letters can be obtained by reviewing information readily available on the internet.

In addition to trying to correct adverse information on your credit report, be sure to begin making payments on a timely basis to your ongoing creditors, such as your mortgages, utility bills which report to credit reporting agencies, auto loans and similar debts. You do not want to continue to create bad credit on an ongoing basis.

Finally, it is possible to obtain credit after bankruptcy. For instance, you can obtain a secured credit card. A secured credit card is a credit card where you put down a deposit with a credit card company which extends credit secured all or in part against the deposit. The interest rates are usually high, the late payment penalties high, and there are usually other adverse aspects to use of the cards. In other words, they tend to be a "bad deal", however, if you pay faithfully they do report to the credit reporting agencies and you can build up your credit.

You can also obtain auto loans or other "instalment loans" after bankruptcy, though you once again have to watch out for high interest rates. A large down payment or a co-signer may be needed to keep the interest rates reasonable. Making these and other payments faithfully after bankruptcy can allow you to re-establish credit after bankruptcy, credit which you could never have obtained if you had you never made the difficult decision to file bankruptcy in the first place.

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