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Your Arizona Bankruptcy Rights! Your RIGHT To File Bankruptcy! Your RIGHT To A Bankruptcy Discharge in Arizona!!

By Joseph McDaniel, Esq.

So you've got a driver's license.  That's good, because you'll need it at the first meeting of creditors (your 341 meeting) in your bankruptcy case, whether it's a Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 case. Along with your social security card.

Do you have a right to your driver's license?

No. You do not.

As long as you fill out the form, pay your fees, pass your tests, obey the signs and lights, qualify as an Arizona Resident, and as long as your car passes emission tests and safety inspections, and you aren't driving while distracted or under the influence of alcohol, you have a privilege to drive a car in Arizona that can be revoked for all sorts of reasons.

That's about the way it works with bankruptcy in the United States, and in Arizona, in specific.

You have something like a conditional right, or maybe a privilege, to file a bankruptcy.

As long as you pay the filing fee, or qualify for an exception to the filing fee payment.

As long as you qualify under the dreaded means test (is that one word?), or one of the exceptions to the means test. Or as long as you qualify for the Chapter that you filed (you don't qualify under the means test for Chapter 7, and you're over the debt limits for a Chapter 13? A personal Chapter 11 is in your future, and it ain't pretty! Or maybe a workout of some species, or a negotiation with all your creditors, and maybe an Accord and Satisfaction. Depends.).

Do you have a right to a discharge in your bankruptcy case?

Absolutely!

As long as you qualified for a Chapter 7. Or you made the payments in your Chapter 13, or qualified for a hardship discharge after not making all the payments.

And as long as you gave the trustee the docs the trustee asked for in The Trustee Letter.

And as long as you gave the trustee copies of three years of tax returns, assuming that you were required to file tax returns for those years.

And as long as you give the trustee the tax refund you received after filing your Chapter 7. You'll keep that in your Chapter 13, but the price is three to five years of payments to the trustee that dwarf that benefit.

Do you have a right to the exemptions that you listed in your bankruptcy schedules?

Of course you do!

Unless the trustee disagrees with your definition of "tools of the trade", and the U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the District of Arizona agrees with your trustee instead of you. Or unless the trustee believes that you should have used Blue Book instead of Edmunds.

That's a topic I really should litigate one of these days, in the right case. When I get a Round Tuit.

Your exemptions may be a subject of spirited debate if he or she believe that you were a resident for less than two years here in Arizona; see Exemptions Express.

So, yeah. You have an absolute bundle of nifty rights under the Bankruptcy Laws of the United States, which are a very big book indeed.

Sorta.

p.s. you don't think that the exceptions and qualifications that I discussed above are the only limitations on your "bankruptcy rights", do you? They're not, of course.

p.p.s. bankruptcy can be a very useful tool; it can accomplish much, if it's used skillfully, and by an honest, well-informed debtor.

But, to quote "The Music Man", you gotta know the territory!

Full post as published by Arizona Bankruptcy Attorney Blog on November 03, 2010 (boomark / email).