When you stop making mortgage payments, an experienced Arizona foreclosure lawyer or Arizona real estate lawyer will advise that you will still be able to live in your house for at least 90 days after a foreclosure notice is filed and delivered to you. And depending on how aggressive the lender is, a foreclosure notice may not be filed for quite some time after you stop making payments.
If you make too much money, you may not qualify for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, forcing you to file Chapter 13 and make monthly payments for three to five years. But even if you make too much money, an experienced Arizona bankruptcy lawyer may still be able to help you qualify for a Chapter 7 by performing a complicated analysis called the Means Test.
Every person who owns real estate should have an Arizona estate planning lawyer prepare a beneficiary deed that automatically conveys real estate to an owner’s beneficiaries upon the owner’s death. This is important because a will does not have to be probated with respect to valuable real estate that is automatically conveyed to a person’s heirs via a beneficiary deed.
An Arizona bankruptcy lawyer will advise that a debtor may keep all wages received for work the debtor performs after the bankruptcy filing date. However, a debtor may have to pay to the bankruptcy trustee 25% of wages, commissions or accounts receivables that were earned but unpaid as of the bankruptcy filing date.
A common question I get is how long must a person wait after a foreclosure, short sale or bankruptcy before that person will qualify for another home loan. Although an Arizona real estate lawyer or Arizona bankruptcy lawyer is not a “credit expert”, Fannie Mae has established a number of different waiting periods for so called “derogatory credit events”.