Its quite a confusing issue. I have a similar problem Togother my wife and I make to much but alone its a whole different story. My disposable without wife is 150 dollars and with her is 1200 dollars. She left me due to gambling problem. The issue is not enought time to divorce at this time according to lawyer. She has filed in the past before we were married a couple years ago so we couldn't file joint and all the debt is in my name individual accounts. The only joint item we have is school loans. I just don't understand how this will work saying we are seperated but thats what the lawyer said to do. So confusing and so stressfull
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Should we file Married or Seperated??
- Thread starter LostinMI
- Start date
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two questions for you Lost:
the debt you have, is it mostly in your name, your husband's or both? i'm just asking because in my first marriage, we filed bankruptcy and i regret it every day. the lawyer told us that i had to put my name on the BK even though 95% of the debt was my husband's. nothing was joint, either. the lawyer told me "well the creditors will come after you if you don't" and so i went along with it. i only had about $2K of debt, all of which would have been paid off or taken off my credit report years ago. i guess what i'm saying is "is it worth it for both of you to file?"
along those lines is my second question- have you thought about dividing the debts in divorce court THEN filing sole BK? i know you said that you can't afford to live apart, but that doesn't mean you have to married to live together. going by just your income, you might not have too much disposable income, either.
the debt you have, is it mostly in your name, your husband's or both? i'm just asking because in my first marriage, we filed bankruptcy and i regret it every day. the lawyer told us that i had to put my name on the BK even though 95% of the debt was my husband's. nothing was joint, either. the lawyer told me "well the creditors will come after you if you don't" and so i went along with it. i only had about $2K of debt, all of which would have been paid off or taken off my credit report years ago. i guess what i'm saying is "is it worth it for both of you to file?"
along those lines is my second question- have you thought about dividing the debts in divorce court THEN filing sole BK? i know you said that you can't afford to live apart, but that doesn't mean you have to married to live together. going by just your income, you might not have too much disposable income, either.
LostinMI said:We both have significant unsecured debt, so I really think we both need to file. The question being whether we file together or separately.... and the more I check into it the more it looks like we need to file separately.... but we just can't afford to be separated right now.
does michigan have separation? you know, like semi-divorced? is it the same six month wait?
have you thought about dividing the debts in divorce court THEN filing sole BK?
Not gonna work. The BK court doesn't care about who gets what debts in a divorce - and neither do creditors whether you file BK or not. If YOUR name is on the account, they can come after you, they are NOT bound by any divorce decree.
JulBug66 - you're in AZ, its a community property state, the BK lawyer advised you properly to be included in the bankruptcy. Because community property also means community debt, your lawyer was exactly right - creditors WOULD have come after you for any debts incurred by EITHER of you during the marriage and after divorce you would no longer have had ANY protection from those creditors.
Lost, I think you're on the right track. There's nothing that says a married couple can't file separately and since you'll be divorcing, your income will have to stand on its own against the debts.