New Jersey Bankruptcy Blog

Should you retain the services of a bankruptcy lawyer in New Jersey even if your case seems cut and dry?
Let’s assume that you are ‘attorney averse.’ In other words, you want to do everything you can to solve your own problems and manage your own debt and money issues. Some people may have the talents and skills to do so. But most people — including most lawyers and financial specialists — can quickly find themselves overwhelmed by paperwork, creditor harassment, and complications.
In the eighth post of our 10 Reasons to Hire a New Jersey Bankruptcy Attorney blog series, we will discuss how a strategically-focused New Jersey bankruptcy attorney can help you resolve complications as they arise, keep you on a straight and narrow path to rehabilitating your finances and budget, protecting key assets, and stopping creditors from harassing you.
What complications could arise?

1. Discovery of new assets and/or liabilities — As you fill out your paperwork and examine your debts and assets under the microscope, you may discover critical new information. For instance, you may find that you have an inheritance or a trust that was left to you somewhere. Or, you may uncover some old credit card debt from the late 1990s. How do you report these new assets and liabilities? How do you prioritize repayments? Questions abound, and if you don’t understand the subtleties of the New Jersey bankruptcy code, you could potentially make an inaccurate statement that could delay or vastly complicate your filing.
2. New creditors could appear out of the woodwork — While you are filing for bankruptcy, a new creditor — or creditors — may initiate actions against you. These actions can even include lawsuits. Unless you have a reliable attorney on your team to strategize how to respond to these individuals or organizations, your entire debt management plan can be thrown off.
3. Circumstances in your own life can change — dramatically — If suddenly, you lose your job or lose a significant income stream, the ‘facts on the ground’ can change significantly. In cases like these, it’s extremely helpful to be able to turn to a competent and reliable NJ bankruptcy lawyer to figure out how to respond effectively.
4. Simple is never so simple — As author Nassim Taleb points out in his book, The Black Swan, it is essential to expect the unexpected. If you proceed with your bankruptcy filing on your own under the assumption that, since you have a simple case, the resolution should be simple; you may be in for some unwelcome surprises. Taleb uses the example of a Thanksgiving turkey to illustrate this point. The turkey spends most of his life blissfully eating feed and clucking about with his fellow turkeys. Then one day — a day that starts like any other — the farmer comes in and chops off his head. The moral is that you never know when some radical unfortunate event will completely change your circumstances. Thus, it behooves you to exercise an abundance of caution when it comes to planning your finances.

For help discerning a creditable, proactive strategy for your NJ bankruptcy filing, connect with the Law Offices of Robert Manchel today at (866) 503 5655. Attorney Manchel deals exclusively with foreclosure resolution and bankruptcy cases, and he is certified as a consumer law bankruptcy attorney by the American Board of Certification.
To learn about the minimal upfront investment required when seeking the help of a New Jersey bankruptcy attorney, please refer to our next post.

Do you really need the services of a New Jersey bankruptcy attorney, or can you resolve your personal financial crisis on your own? Obviously, different debtors have different needs. But before you dismiss the idea of retaining an attorney, our seventh post in the 10 Reasons to Hire a New Jersey Bankruptcy Attorney blog series will help you consider the downsides of not seeking assistance from a bankruptcy attorney. For instance:

1. Ruined credit rating and FICO score – Individuals who fail to take effective action in a timely manner can wind up with abysmally low FICO scores and ruined credit ratings. Once you are unable to get credit, your financial leverage will be severely limited. For instance, you may not be able to find money to buy a house, lease a car, or purchase a key asset for your business. Similarly, you may not be able to get a credit card. Moreover, once you get into a bad credit situation, it can be very difficult to climb your way out. Credit repair can be a time intensive, fraught, and aggravating process.
2. Creditor harassment – Ignoring your mounting debts can ‘feel good’ in the short term; but if you ‘go numb’ to your obligations to creditors, chances are, your creditors won’t return the favor. Harassing letters, phone calls, and other kinds of contact can scare you and your family, create needless aggravation and anxiety, and can actually be precursors to lawsuits or other kinds of legal action. When you retain a bankruptcy NJ lawyer, on the other hand, you can end creditor harassment and begin down the road to financial recovery.
3. Garnishments and losses of services – If you persist in ignoring your debts and putting off retaining a NJ bankruptcy lawyer, you can suffer an array of consequences, including, but not limited to: garnishment of your wages; utility shutdown; repossession of your car or other assets; eviction; foreclosure; and, a bank account levy.
4. Anxiety, stress, and depression – The longer you delay attending to your debt situation, the more the uncertainty may annoy you, cause problems with relationships, force you to overwork, and create psychological problems. For instance, higher levels of stress and anxiety can increase cortisol levels in the body, which can result in a predisposition for more severe illnesses. So there is a very real risk that putting off dealing with your debts could physically impact your health.
5. You will likely have to get a lawyer anyway – If you delay retaining a competent attorney, chances are high that your debt problems won’t go away and that, in fact, they will snowball. Thus, you will be forced to retain an attorney after all – but now you will be saddled with even bigger problems.

To tackle your financial problems straight on and get sound, practical advice for moving forward, connect with the Law Offices of Robert Manchel today at 866-503-5655.
Please refer to our next post to learn what potential complications are likely to arise when dealing with bankruptcy and how to best handle such issues.

As the sixth post in our 10 Reasons to Hire a New Jersey Bankruptcy Attorney blog series, we will present how an experienced, knowledgeable, and compassionate New Jersey bankruptcy attorney can provide strategic guidance, not just to help you and your family get out of debt, but also to help you channel energies in a more constructive way. Search for an attorney with these attributes:

1. Credentialed – Hucksters and scam artists regularly take advantage of desperate debtors. No one wants to get involved with a scam artist. But it can often be difficult to tell these people apart from genuinely experienced agents. Remember: just because someone has good credentials doesn’t mean that he or she can deliver. However, if a debt relief agent lacks good credentials, that should be a red flag.
2. Specialized – Many NJ bankruptcy lawyers are “jacks of all trade, masters of none.” In other words, they tackle all kinds of cases, including consumer bankruptcy, white collar crime, fraud, criminal defense, and so forth. This lack of specialization can hurt you. After all, if you’re not constantly paying attention to the evolution of bankruptcy NJ law, you could miss important subtleties that could help your clients.
3. Accessible – A proactive New Jersey Bankruptcy lawyer should take your calls and emails and provide attentive service. Unfortunately, many attorneys and other debt relief professionals fail to listen effectively to the needs of debtors and thus create needless stresses and anxiety.
4. Knowledgeable – New Jersey bankruptcy law is always changing. The federal bankruptcy code and federal rules of bankruptcy procedure likewise evolve at a rapid clip. Ideally, you want an attorney who keeps pace with changes in the field.
5. Experienced – A limited number of judges, trustees, and agents of the court, handle the majority of New Jersey bankruptcy cases. Ideally, you want to retain a lawyer who has good relationships with these people and who knows how to negotiate with them effectively on behalf of clients.
6. Proven – A lawyer may be a financial wizard and a keen student of the law, but if he or she hasn’t demonstrated practical results over many years, this should give you pause. After all, you don’t want to be a test case. You want to work with someone who has demonstrated success time and again in cases like yours.

To explore the philosophy, process, and credentials of the attorney Robert Manchel, please browse his site or dial his hotline now at 866-503-5655.
Please refer to our next post to find out how failing to hire a NJ bankruptcy lawyer can lead to problems.

To better understand how you can make the most out of your NJ bankruptcy options, the fifth post in our 10 Reasons to Hire a New Jersey Bankruptcy Attorney blog series will address this issue. The experienced New Jersey bankruptcy attorneys here at the Law Offices of Robert Manchel can help you plan a strategic, ethical, organized plan of action to get your finances under control, wrangle your debts, stop creditors from harassing you, and protect your assets. Mr. Manchel has been working hard on behalf of New Jersey debtors since 1992, and he exclusively handles bankruptcy and foreclosure cases. Mr. Manchel has demonstrated success time and again for his clients, and he is happy to provide references and/or testimonials upon request. You can also call the offices at 1-866-503-5655 any time to discuss your circumstances and get a competent and no obligation consultation.
What can an attorney like Mr. Manchel do to improve your chances of good outcome? Here is a short list:

• Stop the garnishing of wages
• Get utilities turned back on
• End creditor harassment
• Reduce anxiety about money and about your future
• Develop a plausible and reasonable battle plan to get you and your family back to financial health
• Help get your New Jersey driver’s license back
• Get many of your most pressing debts excused or eliminated
• Eliminate certain debts because they have expired due to statue of limitations
• Protect key assets like your home, car, or boat
• Get certain pieces of property exempted, such as real estate
• Put you and your family on the road to financial rehabilitation by connecting you with competent counselors, financial planners and independent consumer debt organizations
• Rearrange child support obligations, thus reducing the amount of money you have to pay in the short term
• Eliminate income taxes and other taxes under certain special cases
• Learn the basics of debt management, budgeting, and prudent planning so you don’t wind up repeating mistakes of the past

Mr. Manchel works closely with all clients and provides easy accessibility. He believes passionately that informed, educated and respected clients do better in the long term, and he and his associates go the extra mile to provide information and strategies to ensure long term success.
Please read our next post to grasp how experience and knowledge will benefit you with your bankruptcy filing endeavors.

In the forth post of our 10 Reasons to Hire a New Jersey Bankruptcy Attorney blog series, we will discuss how to avoid common mistakes when filing for bankruptcy in New Jersey.
If your finances are a mess and you are faced with foreclosure, you may be hesitant to retain a New Jersey Bankruptcy attorney to help you strategize and assess your options simply out of reluctance to take on yet another financial obligation. While it’s generally prudent to avoid taking on obligations when you’re in debt, it can be a significant mistake to fail to consult, in a timely manner, with a NJ Bankruptcy lawyer. Here’s why:

1. You may make unrealistic promises to creditors – As the adage goes, “Pride cometh before the fall.” If you have spent your life working hard, saving, and generally being financially prudent, you may avoid filing for bankruptcy NJ out of fear that doing so might represent a lowering of your standards. Unfortunately, when you attempt to negotiate directly with creditors, you can get yourself in hot water. By making unrealistic promises or by behaving unnecessarily antagonistically towards creditors, you can complicate your relationships with them, legal and otherwise.
2. You could file for the wrong bankruptcy – New Jersey bankruptcy law allows petitioners to file for various kinds of relief, including chapter 7, chapter 11, and chapter 13. In addition, some individuals may qualify for reorganization that falls short of bankruptcy – such as credit counseling. The differences among these various kinds of relief can be subtle. You can’t make a keen assessment about what kind of relief is best just by reading about your options on the internet. Only a battle-tested, veteran New Jersey bankruptcy lawyer can really help you make the best choice – and he or she can do so only after deeply investigating the state of your assets, debts, financials, hopes, and anxieties. If you file for the wrong kind of bankruptcy, you could potentially lose major assets that you could otherwise protect – such as a car or house.
3. Overworking to make up the difference – As another old adage goes, “If you are in a hole, stop digging.” Often, individuals who are in debt may take on second or even third jobs to try to pay the bills and keep everything in balance. This may be a plausible strategy for the short term, but working yourself to the bone is almost never a successful strategy for the long term. Unless and until you work with an attorney who can help you understand your legal options and plan for a reasonable future, you may find yourself running hard on the treadmill and getting nowhere.
4. Risk of winding up with bad counsel – If you’re desperate to deal with your debt or to save your home, you might be surprised at how many different organizations and individuals will show up to “help you” get out of debt and reorganize your finances. While some of these individuals and institutions no doubt provide good services, bad advisors abound. If you rely on unethical, naïve, or incompetent advisors, you could wind up in much more complicated and frustrating financial straits.
5. Could accidentally perpetrate fraud – Here is a final adage to consider: “desperate times call for desperate measures.” This adage, perhaps, is rather inappropriate. In fact, when you are under serious financial pressures, taking desperate action can often lead to trouble. If you fail to disclose all of your assets on a bankruptcy filing form, for instance, or if you intentionally downplay your debts in the hopes that the court “won’t notice,” you could be severely penalized. In fact, under certain situations, you can even be arrested for white collar crime.

To avoid making completely unnecessary mistakes, consider retaining the services of a confident, experienced, and highly reputable New Jersey bankruptcy attorney, such as Robert Manchel. Call the Law Offices of Robert Manchel now at 866-503-5655 for good, reliable, and compassionate assistance with your financial problems. Unlike other attorneys who practice bankruptcy NJ law, Mr. Manchel focuses exclusively on bankruptcy and foreclosure resolution, and he holds accreditation from the American Bar Association and the American Board of Certification.
To find out how you can make the most out of your New Jersey bankruptcy options, please read our next post.

As the third post in our 10 Reasons to Hire a New Jersey Bankruptcy Attorney blog series, the focus will be on how to get the most out of the effectiveness of your New Jersey bankruptcy filing.
First of all, a savvy New Jersey bankruptcy lawyer can maximize the benefits you get out of your bankruptcy NJ filing. With enhanced efficiency, you can protect more of your assets, excuse more of your debts, and move past your bankruptcy faster and more effectively. Moreover, you will be better prepared to build a sustainable financial future and to avoid subsequent NJ bankruptcies. Here are few of the benefits of improved efficiency:

1. Your attorney (and/or his or her staff) can do paperwork for you – The paperwork and petitions that a debtor must file – even for the simplest New Jersey bankruptcy cases – can be overwhelming. Without an attorney helping you, you can easily get snowed under by these technical forms. Moreover, if you make mistakes – for instance, leave out certain assets or debts or provide inaccurate numbers – these inaccuracies can haunt you later and complicate your filing.
2. Maximize your exemptions – New Jersey bankruptcy laws are always changing. Rules governing what assets can be exempt are also constantly shifting. Only an experienced and up to speed attorney can advise you properly about your best strategy for protecting as many of your assets as possible. Believe it or not, subtle changes in how you declare your property, for instance, can radically alter the outcome of your filing. You may be able to protect a car, a house, or other major asset. Moreover, even small ‘victories’ in terms of maximizing your exemptions can pay dividends that can easily compensate you for your legal fees and then some.
3. Your time equals money – In any financial transaction, you should strive for cost efficiency. You must invest something – be it money, time, or energy – into any given project. You also should expect some return from that investment. When you hire an attorney, he or she can tackle a variety of processes that would likely eat up tremendous amounts of your time. If, for instance, you earn fifteen dollars an hour doing your job and you waste 100 hours filling out NJ bankruptcy forms (probably ineffectively), that’s $1,500 dollars in potential income you have lost. On the other hand, if you essentially “outsource” that work to a respected New Jersey bankruptcy attorney, you can use that time to earn more money or otherwise get your finances/ life in order.
4. Prioritizing equals money – A New Jersey bankruptcy attorney can help you prioritize your next actions, so that you attend to the important aspects of your filing when they need to be attended to. For instance, you won’t waste time attending to a particular creditor while ignoring key filing deadlines. An experienced attorney can keep you on the straight and narrow and make sure that you follow a time-tested strategy for getting your finances under control.
5. Fair and easy legal fees save you money – Reasonable legal fees help you optimize your reorganization. Thus, you need not worry about yet another expense on top of all your other expenses.

To learn more about the reputable and respected attorneys here at the Law Offices of Robert Manchel, dial 1-866-503-5655 right now. Attorney Manchel is certified by the American Board of Certification as a consumer law New Jersey bankruptcy attorney. He has been helping clients in New Jersey discover relief via bankruptcy since 1992.
Please read our next post to find out how you can prevent mistakes from happening when filing for a New Jersey bankruptcy.