Can I Afford An Elk Grove Village Bankruptcy Attorney?

Most Elk Grove Village bankruptcy attorneys will work a payment plan with you prior to filing your bankruptcy case.  What this means is you can hire an attorney for as little as typically $100 down and you can notify creditors about the fact that you have hired a bankruptcy attorney.  Your creditors will then be prohibited from contacting you directly once you tell them you are represented by an attorney.  Creditors still do have the opportunity to file a lawsuit against you, however, most creditors are not going to expend the money required to do so when they know you have a bankruptcy attorney and that there is going to be a bankruptcy case filing fairly shortly in due time. 

If you can afford to make a payment of $100 every two weeks or $100 every month, most bankruptcy attorneys are going to be willing to work with you on that schedule.  There are even some attorneys that will file your bankruptcy case prior to being paid in full.  If that is your situation, you will have to work out a separate agreement with your attorney for work done after the case is filed.  This is known as a post-filing retainer agreement and it must itemize the work that the attorney is going to do before the cases filed and the work that the attorney is going to do after the case is filed.

 If you are not making the minimum payments on your credit cards and if you are not making payments to any creditors that are going to be eliminated in your bankruptcy, then you should have funds available over time to pay your bankruptcy attorney in installments.  Most bankruptcy attorneys realize that you do not have a lump sum of cash that you can pay to get your case filed immediately.  Thus, most attorneys work out payment plans. 

The typical payment plan that I like to work is $100 every two weeks directly out of a checking account via electronic funds transfer.  Once I have a client who is committed to the payment plan, I am more than happy to represent that client, handle the creditor calls and prepare all the people work in advance of filing.  I like to wait until the fees are paid in full until the case is filed, that way I don’t need to engage in a post-petition retainer agreement and I don’t have to worry about a client who is not going to carry through with their end of the bargain after the case is filed. 

So, if you are struggling financially, you do have the ability to make installment payments to your bankruptcy attorney provided you stop making minimum payments on your credit cards as well as other payments to creditors that are easily going to be eliminated in your bankruptcy case.