Bankruptcy, Foreclosure and Debt Defense Blog

No. VA disability compensation does not count in the bankruptcy means test. If you added your disability check to your pay, came out over the median, and gave up on Chapter 7, run the numbers again. Leave the disability check out this time. A federal law called the HAVEN Act took disability-related VA and military…

In DC, the 8 a.m. weather forecast can decide whether you keep your home today. Here is the bottom line. DC bars evictions on freezing days, on days with rain or snow, and now on days forecast above 95 degrees. Maryland law requires a judge to stay evictions in extreme weather. Virginia has no statewide…

Maybe it was a letter from a substitute trustee with a sale date. Maybe it was a complaint from DC Superior Court with your address on it. Either way, someone is trying to sell your house. DC lets lenders foreclose two different ways, and how you stop the sale depends on which path your lender…

Your mortgage servicer has sent three letters in three months, and each one sounds worse than the last. One says you are in default, one says the lender intends to accelerate, and the newest one has a date and a time on it. These notices mark three different stages of a foreclosure, and each one…

A thick envelope comes by certified mail with “Notice of Intent to Foreclose” across the top. Six weeks or more later, someone knocks on your door with court papers from Upper Marlboro or Rockville. Maryland foreclosure runs through the circuit court, and it gives homeowners more steps, and more chances to stop it, than a…

The letter came by certified mail. It names a substitute trustee, a date, a time and a place, which may be the front of the circuit court building in Fairfax, Arlington, Alexandria or Prince William. That is a Virginia notice of sale, and it means the lender has asked the trustee to sell your house…

The servicer sent a thick packet, a list of documents and a warning that incomplete applications won’t be reviewed. You want to send it once and have it count. Most servicers ask for the same core documents. Send all of them together, keep proof of what you sent, and read the servicer’s acknowledgment letter closely,…

The servicer’s packet says to include a hardship letter. The sample you found online was written for someone else’s problem, and yours doesn’t fit it. A hardship letter is short and factual. It says what happened, when, what it did to your income, where things stand now and what you’re asking for. Below are samples…

You did the math, or a calculator did it for you, and the answer was that you earn too much for Chapter 7. The credit card balances are the same as they were before you checked. Earning too much for Chapter 7 does not mean you earn too much for bankruptcy. For most people over…

You live in Prince George’s or Montgomery County, and you have been reading about bankruptcy exemptions online. Half of what you find talks about the “federal exemptions,” and you can’t tell whether any of it applies to you. It mostly doesn’t. If you live in Maryland, you use Maryland’s exemption list, plus a few protections…