If you are looking for Chapter 13 bankruptcy attorneys in Georgia you will be spoilt for choice but it pays to do some research before picking one to avoid an inexperienced or incompetent lawyer who could cost you dearly not only in terms of money but also sound advice.
The first thing to do is don’t delay! It is better to make a well informed, considered choice than wait until the last minute when you are under pressure and not thinking as clearly. Don’t ask friends for recommendations unless they have used a bankruptcy attorney themselves and can advise from first hand experience. The best people to ask will be those in the profession so if you know, for example, someone who works in the legal field they will probably be the most knowledgeable person to guide you.
Be sure to check the qualifications of the attorney. For added peace of mind, they should be certified by the American Bankruptcy Institute which means that they are required to work to additional standards. Try and observe some bankruptcy attorneys at work in a bankruptcy court. This will not only give you the chance to get a feel for the different styles and which one suits you but also to personally ask fellow debtors who they would recommend.
Interview your shortlist of attorneys and visit their offices. Look to see how organized and smoothly run they are. Find out how much time you can expect your attorney to spend with you getting to know your case. Make sure you understand the fee structure. Finally, stay in contact and take an interest in your own case so that you can check the progress and understand what is going. Don’t be tempted just to pick the cheapest attorney because it may turn out to be a false economy if they are not experienced or knowledgeable enough.
Chapter 13 Bankruptcy Attorneys In Georgia
There are several well known bankruptcy firms in Georgia, some of which are listed below. Do your due diligence in good time to satisfy yourself that you made a sound choice to the best of your ability.
Berry & Associates
This bankruptcy firm specializes in personal bankruptcy and social disability law which means that it’s attorneys become very experienced in these two areas. They appear to be known to the bankruptcy courts of the Northern District of Georgia which is an advantage and they will give you a free first consultation so you can judge whether you feel comfortable with them or not. They also offer flexible appointment times and days such as Saturdays. They have a good spread of offices in Atlanta, Newnan, Gainesville, Conyers, Dalton amongst others.
Clark & Washington, P.C
This firm also offers a free initial consultation and claims to be one of the biggest filers of bankruptcy in Georgia. Their fee for filing Chapter 13 is under $300 with a $75 fee to start. This is a large firm who concentrate on individuals rather than corporate bankruptcy filings. They claim that they will be with you every step of the way and can handle simple or more complex cases.
The Kent Law Firm
This is a family firm which has been going for more than 30 years. They offer a personalized service and understand the stresses involved in filing bankruptcy very well. They claim that they will never not turn up in court as they have seen other lawyers do to their clients and consider it important to keep you informed every step of the way as to the progress of your case. They are based in Atlanta but serve many cities in Georgia.
The Galler Law Firm
www.gallerlaw.com/galler_bankruptcy.html
Another firm which offers free consultation and requests that you bring the following paperwork to your first visit so they can assess your case – two months worth of bills and details of what is owed to creditors, six months of income details and proofs, your most recent tax return and your certificate of pre-bankruptcy credit counseling. This will assist them in gaining a good understanding of the complexity of your situation in order to offer the most suitable advice.
Limbocker Law Firm, LLC
This firm has offices in Vinings, Duluth or Woodstock and again, will offer a free first consultation. They can advise on exempt and non-exempt assets and uniquely on tax issues as the attorney Brian Limbocker also has a taxation qualification.
This is only a small selection of the wide range of Chapter 13 bankruptcy attorneys in Georgia available to anyone needing to file bankruptcy. It is definitely worth taking advantage of the free consultations to determine which one suits you best.
For someone who thankfully has no experience filing for bankruptcy, it is disconcerting to learn from this article that some bankruptcy lawyers do not show up in court for their own client’s case. Again, this is not my cynicism, but what the author of this article pointed out about some of his competitors. And I am quite sure he has the experience to know about the ugly side of this area of the law; Not just the ugly truth about the plight of those filing for chapter eleven, but also the ugly truth of the legal eagles who work in this area of the law.
Getting the advice from someone in the profession is the best idea here, and that doesn’t mean you have to know someone or pay for the advice they actually have fee advice hotlines for attorneys. But the advice in this article about interviewing the attorney before you file to find out how much time he is willing to spend with you to get to know your case is right on, you don’t want someone who is going to just rush through it but actually dedicate some time to you. The Clark & Washington , P.C. sounds like a good way to get started, from someone who has done this before the fees they listed in your article or very good.
This is a rather nice short list of various bankruptcy attorneys. Until I stumbled upon this informative article, I was under the impression that bankruptcy was a straight, cut and dry process, but as I have learned, it is just like anything else. It has its ins and outs as well as potential pitfalls and incompetent service providers, or in this case attorneys. Thankfully, my debt is not so great that I need to consider chapter 11 nor filing for any other chapter for that matter. However, my friend has insurmountable debt and she has considered filing for bankruptcy.
I was not aware of some of the attorneys you listed. It is really difficult to know who will represent you well in court. Doing your due diligence before selecting any attorney is sound advice. Thanks for compiling this list as I may end up using one of these firms in the near future.
The only thing I can say is do your research completely and know what you are getting yourself into, before you decide which chapter to file. Discuss it with a bankruptcy lawyer because they can best tell you which chapter will suit you best. Great article, very informative.
Your article has a lot of good information for helping you decide which type of bankruptcy you should file for your specific needs and the best advice I read was “Do not delay filing bankruptcy can take some time, take it from someone who has been there. If you have bill collectors calling you and harassing you then you want to get this taken care of as soon as possible. And as soon as you file if they continue to call I did find out that if you tell them you have filed bankruptcy they are supposed to leave you alone after that or the attorney can file a grievance on them.
You got to the point in this article rather rapidly, I appreciate that as too many people try to tell you it is a bad thing to do for all partied included and the try to talk you out of it. But it really isn’t it gives the companies that you are filing against t at least some of their money owed and it gives the attorney his pay and it gets rid of creditor that keep hounding you so it makes your life a lot less stressful. Your article will be extremely helpful to those trying to choose which way to go. But always get the advice of a professional when possible, these matters are to important to just guess at.
If I were considering Bankruptcy I would want to get rid of as much debt as I possibly could if not all of it. That is Chapter seven right? What truly are the benefits of filing chapter thirteen Bankruptcy? I read some where that chapter thirteen is for when you are behind and can’t get caught up they bankruptcy court will set you up on smaller payment plans that you can afford and it protects you from the bill collectors and they foreclose on your house and stuff is that right?
Thank you for posting this information and list of bankruptcy lawyers in Georgia, unfortunately I think that my husband and I are going to be looking at bankruptcy in the very near future and I am doing a lot of research on the different chapters right now to find exactly which one would better suit our needs. Right now I am looking towards chapter thirteen because the only thing we are having difficulty with is our house payments. I don’t guess the credit score part of it really matters anymore because we have been late with three payments in a row which damages your credit score anyway. Thanks for your post it will help me find the right lawyer for my needs when it comes down to it.
This is a great list of attorney’s to choose from, thank you for listing them, this is one more piece of the puzzle that I won’t have to stress over while trying to decide which chapter to file. Surely one of these attorneys can help me determine that as well. Much appreciated information thanks for putting it together and posting it for all of us.
Not living in Georgia, the information is not of much use to me, but I certainly would appreciate it if it pertained to the state i live in.
The fact that we are having to look at filing bankruptcy really bothers me and it stresses me out completely because It is such a stigma in society that if you file bankruptcy you are a low life. I appreciate the article you put together of attorneys that we can talk to about this, is there a hotline type thing that I can call and ask questions anonymously? I really don’t want this to come out until it absolutely has to. Thanks again for this information it will be very helpful I’m sure, please post again if you know of a hot line or have any other information.
Do not worry about confidentiality, any attorney you talk to will do so in total privacy and confidence and unless someone sees you walking into the attorney’s office there’s no way for anyone to find out.
Thank you for posting all of this information. It has been kind of a refresher course for me because unfortunately my husband and I have had to file before and it looks as though we may have to file a second time. This time it is going to be different though because of guys like you I will have a lot more information to take to the attorney and ask him about. Thank you so much for this information it will help me a great deal.
If I ever am faced with the unenviable prospect of having to file for bankruptcy, and there are strange people in moving trucks showing up at my home (provided there is still a house left for me to stay in) to collect my belongings, I hope they don’t take my television and game system because in such a time of anguish, the only opportunity for catharsis left for me would be to shoot up some opponents or zombies and imagine they are the greedy, opportunistic, blood thirsty sharks / creditors.
Unfortunately my family is all to familiar with bankruptcy. We filed about 20 years ago and we didn’t know anything about what we were doing so we just went with what the lawyer said to do. To my dismay it looks as though we might have to file again in the next year or so if my husband can not find a job. However this time will be different we know there are more options out there now and we can do some extensive research to educate ourselves before going to the lawyer then we can tell him what we want to do not the other way around. Thank you for the information in your blog it will be helpful in our journey.
This is very embarrassing for my family and myself, but I am glad to see someone post about it before I had to embarrass myself even further by asking questions that I should already no the answers to. I think the advice about not delaying and don’t ask a friend for recommendations unless they have used a bankruptcy attorney before Is the best advice I have seen yet. When you are under the gun and stressed to the max is not the time to then go try and talk to an attorney because nine times out of ten you will forget something and they will be pressuring you to hurry up and make a decision. When I find the attorney that I think I am going to use I will make sure to check them out extensively. Thank you for your advice.
This was a helpful tool to utilize if filing bankruptcy in Georgia, do you know where someone can get this information for other states? Chapter thirteen is where you can pick and choose what you file against is that right? What happens if you file against your house but have no other place to live? I heard one time that they couldn’t throw you out if that was your only option but I don’t believe that at all. There is a chapter that you can file that makes it so the court sets up a payment plan with your debtors to lower all your payments to an affordable amount isn’t there? Which one is that? I want to consider that one for my family because we can pay the bills but we need them to be lowered. I appreciate this information and I will research the internet some more to see if I can find some information like this for my state.
I am from Georgia and I haven’t heard of some of these lawyers before, thanks for posting them for us I was just starting my research into filing bankruptcy and now when I get to the part about finding a attorney it will be easy. I appreciate the help.
Good article. Some questions you may want to ask your bankruptcy attorney are if you can keep your house or car. How soon before you get relief from creditors? What is an automatic stay? What is a discharge? What is the difference between chapter 7 and 13? Once you get a good understanding of your rights, you can then decide whether this is right for you or not.
I wonder why there seems to be such a glut of bankruptcy attorneys In Georgia, unless of course that type of law is practiced by many all over the country. Since this article advises that you should pay attention to certain details when you visit the offices of a bankruptcy attorney, such as the way the office is furnished, I think I would use that criteria to judge the practicality of the lawyer. In other words, I would look for clues that indicate the lawyer is not wasteful with money by splurging on overly expensive office furniture, yet mindful of the need to furnish the office with modern, elegant furniture and dcor that is appropriate for serious business law.
I never knew there were that many bankruptcy lawyers out there , so basically when you figure out which chapter you want to file then you need to speak to one of these guys to get everything concluded. They will then file it through the court system for you and everything. Thanks for the advice and the short list of lawyers to do the trick.
I think it is important for those who are drowning in debt, not to try and face it alone, or worse, ignore the problem and avoid creditors. There is a stigma attached to filing bankruptcy, the assumption is you are a bad person because you entered into debts that you could not repay. Even knowing that you are not a bad person, you still feel some of that social conditioning as your immediate family faces its financial ruin. Seeking the help of a bankruptcy attorney is important not just for legal purposes, having a lawyer on your side provides a support system because he/she acts as a powerful advocate. If you are in severe debt, remember that you are not alone. the number of people that are or will be declaring bankruptcy is on the rise. In the 2008 fiscal year alone, 1.25 million Americans filed for bankruptcy protections.
Thank you for the advice in your blog when it comes to finding an attorney for bankruptcy purposes. I absolutely hate the idea of having to file but you are right I shouldn’t delay finding an attorney for this as soon as I possibly can. By prolonging the inevitable I am just getting deeper in debt and my credit is shot already anyway. I appreciate the advice on what we should look for in an attorney as well and reminding me to check qualifications before I sign them up. Please continue to post any advice you might have and I will check back periodically before I make my decision to see if there is anything you have added that will help me further.
This is a great list of possibilities for us and I am glad I ran across this blog, this saves me the work of having to go through the phone book or internet and find all of these to look into. Your advice on what to look for and how to proceed with finding the right attorney is priceless and I am going to use it diligently. Thank you for all the hard work you put into this post and I will follow your instructions and not put this dreadful task off anymore.
Thank you for the advice, I am going to take your word for it and do exactly what you are telling me to do as far as interviewing the attorneys and such. Do you know when you file bankruptcy does your name end up somewhere in the paper? I was told that it does and if you are a business it will end up in the Business Journal so I just wanted to verify that. Is there a way to keep it unpublished if that is true? I am going to contact some of these attorneys starting Monday because as you said I don’t want to delay this any longer than I absolutely have to.
Those drowning in debt should consider moving to Colorado, as I did to avoid the high cost of living in a major city. Luckily, I landed a job soon but it was still too much to manage all the debt my wife and I had accumulated over the previous several years. After consulting with an attorney, we filed chapter 7. It was a difficult decision since I was working as a financial advisor in a credit union and I was preaching to my customers how to avoid the debt pit, yet, I fell into that pitfall. Things started to improve in about a year after filing chapter 7. In the beginning, we did not want any more credit cards. Nobody wants to give you one for about six months anyway. The interest rate is usually very high. However, in order to rebuild credit history, we started with small limits but would always make full payment on time.
I live in Georgia and I never knew we had this many bankruptcy attorneys this near by of course I never had to look for one before either. I appreciate all the help you have given us here and I now have a starting point. I look forward to anymore information you put out there on this subject and I hope you do because this is a very hard point in our lives to go through without any help.
I hope nobody ever has to face the decision of whether or not to declare bankruptcy. But for those of you who are in a situation in which it’s time to at least consider it, I can tell you from personal experience, it isn’t actually the end of the world, or the end of your financial future. My own spiral of debt wasn’t from overspending, but from under-earning. I was writing a screen play and I had an interested studio. I was living in a place where jobs were scarce, and I was also finishing school. I also had an overconfidence in the sale of the script, that touched on arrogance. I was certain it was just a matter of time before an offer was made on the script. Even the minimum price, $80,000, would have saved me from going under. The studio backed out and I was left with $33,000 in credit card debt and with over $1000 a month in credit card payments- nearly all of which went to the interest. In my case, I was leasing a car and had no other assets. So, I hired a bankruptcy attorney (The fee was $500) and went through the process. All my credit card accounts were closed, and all my debts were dismissed. I felt so incredibly relieved and free, to not have that ever increasing burden on my shoulders. To my surprise, the leasing company allowed me to keep leasing the car, and it even became voluntary, as the lease was no longer legally valid after the bankruptcy. So there is light at the end of the tunnel.
My husband and I filed bankruptcy back in 2004, isn’t there some rule or law that tells you, you can’t file again for so long? Do you know how long that is by chance? I feel for Jesse in that fact that he had to file and he is a financial advisor in a credit union, did this effect his job at all? I can’t imagine that the credit union would want him to remain a financial advisor if he couldn’t manager his finances. I know that in the case of high security jobs like out at some un-named aircraft companies if you have filed bankruptcy they will not give you security clearance to do the job you were already doing anymore.
I think people who judge others who have filed for bankruptcy are sadly, ignorant hypocrites themselves. Financial problems happen to people from all walks of life. Even a well liked celebrity like Kimila Ann “Kim Basinger has filed for bankruptcy. She was a model turned film actress who became famous for her roles in “Never Say Never Again, “The Natural, “L.A. Confidential, and “Batman. Winner of a Golden Globe Award, Academy Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award, Basinger had a promising career. You would think such an accomplished actor would not have trouble getting lucrative gigs. But in 1989, Basinger and a few other investors put up $20 million dollars to buy a small town in Georgia called Braselton. After spending such a hefty amount, she was sued for $8-million for backing-out of the film “Boxing Helena, ultimately leading to her filing for bankruptcy. So don’t let anyone talk to you like you are any less of a person. After all, you are in the company of celebrities…LOL
Thank you for posting all the advice about what you want to ask an attorney and such to make sure they know what they are doing and that they are going to do their best for you when you file. I always thought that you could just trust an attorney to do the very best for his / her client but I am learning through much research that you still have to be very careful. Thank you for this list of attorneys that I can weed through this will help me get started on my journey down a raod I never wanted to travel.
The article suggests that you consult a friend or someone else who has first hand experience with bankruptcy. But if you do not know such a person or have access to a person with such experience, the next best thing I suppose, would be to take heed from cautionary tales. And there are certainly plenty of stories of people who had it all and somehow still managed to squander great wealth. You may not be able to seek advice from these real stories, but they may help one to avoid the feelings of shame and guilt that most people tend to associate with bankruptcy. If I could impart my own two scents, I would say that you should do as the article suggests and seek advice from an experienced person before it becomes too late and even more difficult to repair the damages.