What Does Bankruptcy Cost in Kennesaw or Acworth?

Hi. I’m Roger Ghai, and I wanted to answer the question of, how much will it cost to file a Chapter 7 bankruptcy? Now, I want to first start off by saying that these fees that I’m about to tell you and these general rules that I’m about to tell you are as of today’s date which is October 24th, 2016. If you’re looking at this video five years from now, don’t try to hold me to the fees that I quoted you in 2016. But with that being aside, let’s talk a little bit about the case and what it does cost. Generally speaking, the attorney fees are going to run between $1,200 to $2,000 to file a Chapter 7 case.
Now, that’s a lot of money to come up with all at one time for somebody who’s in a bankruptcy case. For that reason, attorneys, generally, are going to go ahead and work out what we know as a payment plan, although a lot of clients will just come up with all the money at one time. Those attorney fees that I just quoted you, that is a $1,200 to $2,000 in some cases, does not include the court costs. When we file a bankruptcy case, you have to pay to the bankruptcy court clerk through me, or any other bankruptcy lawyer, a fee of $335.
Now, you might ask yourself, “Well, why do I have to pay back to the bankruptcy court clerk?” Because they have to monitor your case. They have to send out a notice to every single creditor that you listed on your bankruptcy case a notice of your bankruptcy file.There are other notices in case monitorings that they have to do while your case is pending.
Now, how is it determined whether your fee is going to be $1,200 all the way up to $2,000, sometimes even more if the cases really complicated? Number one, one of the factors is, generally, if you have just a minimum amount of general unsecured debt and you don’t have any other large ticket items such as a home, or a motor vehicle that you’re trying to keep, then your fees are going to be less. If you’ve been sued, or you’ve been garnished, or something of that nature, then your fees are going to be a little bit more because there are different pleadings that we have to file as your bankruptcy lawyer in both state court and in the federal court to be able to properly represent you in the case.
Anything that we have to do extra, obviously, is more time, and so what we’re doing is we’re charging you for the extra time that we’re spending doing those things. If you have a super complicated case, an example that might be the situation where you’ve got several hundred thousand dollars worth of debt, and maybe it’s a lot of unsecured debt, perhaps even you’ve been self-employed, those cases present different problems because what the Chapter 7 trustee will do, and maybe even the United States trustee will do, is they will require me on your behalf to produce the last six months, or 12 months, or 18 months of, number one, all of your done and bank statements. All of the checking, savings, any types of those statements, they’re going to actually require us to produce that.
In addition, they may require us to produce all of your income taxes for the past several years. Normally, what’s required when we file one of these cases is just your income tax for the preceding year. They may actually, if it’s a more complicated case or if there are certain red flags in the case that we can determine as the bankruptcy lawyers already know and having done this area of law for some time, that the trustee is going to ask for, which is going to be a more laborious type of a Chapter 7 case, then that’s how we have to calculate the fees.
The trustees, especially if you are self-employed, and even if you’ve had a corporation, they are very inquisitive as to the finances of that corporation. So that may mean your bankruptcy lawyer taking hours after hour of not only composing the information and getting it over to the Chapter 7 trustee but actually analyzing it to see whether there are any irregularities in those business checking accounts and so forth which would disqualify you, or if not disqualify you, would make it exceptionally hard for you to get a Chapter 7 bankruptcy discharge.
If you have any questions about the cost of filing Chapter 7 as of 2016, again, we’re at the end of 2016, call my office at 770-792-1000, and I’ll hopefully answer all of your questions.