By Ryan C. Wood
Do you need a San Jose bankruptcy lawyer? We regularly file bankruptcy cases for residents of San Jose and Santa Clara County. All of our free no obligation consultations last about thirty minutes to an hour. We offer personal service for a reasonable fee. We provide personal service by providing you with our direct email addresses for questions or issues. When you call our offices you will speak with my partner, Kitty J, Lin, or me, Ryan C. Wood. We have both filed hundreds of bankruptcy cases and we can answer your questions quickly. Why waste time transferring calls, taking messages or getting wrong answers to your legal questions from non-lawyers. We believe the most convenient and efficient way to communicate with you is directly. You will not be dealing with inexperienced and unlicensed legal assistants or uncertified paralegals like at other firms.
The main goal during your free no obligation consultation is to make sure your questions are answered. If bankruptcy is not right for you for whatever reason we will discuss your options. Bankruptcy is not always the answer for everyone who had debts. If you are being sued by a credit card company or behind on your mortgage payments bankruptcy can definitely help.
Bankruptcy is all about your income, expenses and assets. Bankruptcy in most cases is a quantitative process and not a qualitative process. Under most circumstances the reasons why you have unfortunately fallen on hard times will not determine whether you qualify to file a Chapter 7 case and discharge your unsecured debts like credit cards, your income, expenses and assets will though. These are the things we will be discussing during your free consultation.
In 2005 the Bankruptcy Code was changed and the Means Test was created. The Means Test takes a six-month average of your income, multiples the six-month average by 12 and compares that number to the median income for the number of people in your household for your state. The Means Test also uses some local standards and some national standards for expenses such as house, utilities, food and other expenses. One of the problems with the Means Test is it uses the median income for your state. It really should use the median income for the county in which you live. There are a lot of counties in most states, so using a median income for counties is probably unmanageable. It is not perfect, but it is what we have to determine if you have disposable income available to pay back some or all of your debts.
Give us a call toll free at 1-877-9NEW-LIFE (877-963-9543) to schedule your free consultation and find out if bankruptcy is right for you.