Foreclosure Requirements
What Exactly Will I Need for an Emergency Chapter 13 Filing?
If you are facing a foreclosure emergency – in other words, you face the loss of your home in hours or days, you need to act fast. Now is not the time to guess what to do – Clark & Washington offers emergency legal help and we urge you to call us immediately at 770-488-9300.
Because Chapter 13 bankruptcy is your likely course of action, you need to be prepared to pursue this route – although we will advise you of other alternatives, if applicable. Please also advise us of you have ever filed Chapter 7 or Chapter before here or anywhere else in the country – a prior filing may or may not have any relevance to your right to file an emergency case, but you must tell us because of the special rules that apply to re-filed bankruptcy cases. [link]
Emergency Chapter 13 Procedures
Although you may have heard that the bankruptcy process requires you to produce dozens of pages of documents that will become part of a 50+ page bankruptcy petition, the law does allow us to file “emergency petitions” that will generate a case number and create bankruptcy protection. In order to file a “2 page emergency petition,” we will need at a minimum:
- your credit counseling certificate
- the name, address and account number of your mortgage creditor
- the name and address of the law firm hired by the mortgage lender to process the foreclosure
- all or part of the $274 Chapter 13 filing fee
This information is usually enough for us to prepare and file a Chapter 13 and stop a pending foreclosure. However, this emergency 2 page petition will not be enough for us to process your case through to approval by the bankruptcy judge. Within 14 days after filing the emergency petition, you must gather the remaining information we need to complete your petition and repayment plan. You can read more about the information needed to properly prepare a Chapter 13 case by clicking on the link.
If you do not follow through and complete your petition, your case will be dismissed, and you may lose important rights that could stop you from filing another case in the future.