A brief summary of this episode

Transcript:

Jeff Kelly: Hello, this is Jeff Kelly and in today’s episode I want to talk about how rising home prices cause bankruptcy problems. How in the world could rise any equity in real estate cause financial problems for a homeowner? I know that sounds super strange, but I’m going to go on to explain how it’s happening.

Jeff Kelly: I have been practicing consumer bankruptcy for over 22 years, and I’ve never seen a real estate market like the one that is currently roaring. You would think that rising Home Equity would be good for all owners. But that is not the case for families who are in need of getting relief from credit card and medical debt that has accrued because of COVID related unemployment. How can rising home value stop people from filing bankruptcy?

Jeff Kelly: In Georgia, the most equity that a married couple can protect is $43,000. A single person can protect only 21,500. So what happens if you need to file bankruptcy? But you have equity that is way over the limits? The answer to this question is the same as the answer to most legal questions. It depends, depends on what? it depends on the exact amount of equity. When a family has slightly more equity than the exempted limits, they usually won’t present a significant problem in bankruptcy. Because you have to factor in real estate transaction cost if the trustee were to move to sell the house in question. You know, in most cases, you can count on 10% of the purchase price is going to go to real estate commission real estate costs and legal costs for closing on a house. However, it’s not uncommon right now. For me to see potential clients who have over $100,000 in equity, because real estate is so ridiculously hot right now. It is so hot. I’ve got a family member who just put their house for sale in Cobb County. And no joke in one week. They have 23 offers. It’s crazy. I’ve never seen anything like it. When is it going to end? I don’t know.

Jeff Kelly: The funny thing about real estate to me right now is that most of my clients don’t realize how high the value of their homes have climbed. In the past, we could rely on the tax assessor evaluations. Now the market is so ridiculously hot. Zillow seems to be a better source in most cases, and Zillow seems to be getting better and better at their formula for how they evaluate. So the question is, can you lose your house in a chapter 7 if you have too much equity? And the answer is yes, you can. The reason a person must be extremely careful and ascertaining the value of their home before filing chapter 7 bankruptcy is because once you’re in the thick of it, you can’t get out.

Jeff Kelly: Little side note, one of my favorite television shows growing up was Gilligan’s Island. And it seemed like there were a lot of episodes where Gilligan would get stuck in quicksand. Now, of course, Gilligan’s Island is a great, wonderful show. And so he always got out, but I mean, sometimes he had to struggle really, really hard. Okay. But chapter 7, if you’ve got equity in your house is kind of like quicksand. But unlike

Transcript:

Intro Speaker: It’s time for KellyCanHelp hosted by Jeff Kelly, Attorney at Law with the Law office of Jeffrey B. Kelly. And now here’s Jeff Kelly.

Jeff Kelly: Okay. Welcome to the show today. Thank you, Mr. JD Houvener really appreciate you being here. I’m looking forward to talking to you about patents and helping my my listeners and former clients learn all about it. So JD, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

JD Houvener: Absolutely. Yeah. And, Jeff, thank you for having me on the show. This is a it’s a pleasure. I’m a patent attorney, and I’m the owner here at Bold Patents Law Firm. We’re based out of Mountlake Terrace, which is just north of Seattle, Washington. And we help inventors get patents, we were pretty passionate about working with solo and small inventors, small businesses that is, and really, without regard to any kind of technology. So you name it from your, as seen on TV type gadgets, you know, to high powered software apps, were really kind of across the board.

Jeff Kelly: Excellent, excellent. So how many years have you been in practice?

JD Houvener: Just over five years.

Jeff Kelly: Okay, where’d you go to law school,

JD Houvener: went to Seattle, you just right here in South Seattle, and went ahead and got my MBA as well from there is great institution.

Jeff Kelly: Excellent. How about your undergrad?

JD Houvener: University, Washington, graduated with an industrial engineering degree from there and kind of a funny story you got went off and chase that engineering dream for a bit, I worked for 10 years at Boeing aerospace company, you may have heard of them. They’ve been in the news lately. Mostly bad news. But I think they’re on the rebound. I helped design their 787 Dreamliner fiberglass wing technology worked there for 10 years as a systems engineer. And you know, it was a fantastic company to work for, I just kind of knew I was destined for I can own my own company or on my own business somehow. And Boeing was actually the the company kind enough to put me to school to get my MBA at Seattle U. And that’s when I started, you know, planted the seed toward business ownership, and thought about being leveraged by engineering, a technical background into patent law. And so I’ve been kind of launched into that. Helping inventors from the technical side, you know, argue with examiners about getting their patents granted, fell in love with it and started a company around it.

Jeff Kelly: Well, so like, what point did you realize, hey, I want to go to law school. I think I want to do this.

JD Houvener: Well, so I as part of the MBA curriculum, the last you know, course you take is a business plan competition. And I was the only one of the whole school to my business plan was to start a law firm. And it was I was really saddened by the fact that didn’t get into the final round, because it just the judges, like no one really cares about a lot. Like, no, everyone has kind of these hockey stick, you know, you know, started out, you know, SAP startups or new product whiz bang gadget type companies. I really liked it, because I was kind of in love with the show Shark Tank. And I think a lot of people were when it first launched in the early, mid 2000s.

Jeff Kelly:

Transcript:

Intro Speaker: It’s time for KellyCanHelp hosted by Jeff Kelly, Attorney at Law with the law office of Jeffrey B. Kelly. And now here’s Jeff Kelly.

Jeff Kelly: Okay, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show today. Today’s guest is Mr. Don Golden. He is a bankruptcy attorney from Tampa, Florida. And he’s got a company called Fresh Start for Life. And it’s something that we actually offer to all of my clients. And so I am looking forward to talking here with Don and hearing more about fresh start for life. Don, welcome to the show.

Don Golden: Thanks for having me, Jeff.

Jeff Kelly: You’re welcome. So tell us a little about yourself. How long have you lived in Tampa?

Don Golden: So I moved here in 1997. I moved here right after I graduated from law school. So it’s been 23 years I’ve lived here

Jeff Kelly: 23 years you’ve been in practice?

Don Golden: No. Well, yeah. So I’ve been a practice in 1998. I had a little family emergency that prevented me from taking the bar exam. My dad died like two weeks before the bar exam in July. And I’m from Maine originally. So I had to go back up north and take care of some business and things. So I delayed taking the bar exam until February. So I didn’t actually start practicing law until February of 1998. That will actually April when I got my license.

Jeff Kelly: Okay. And then throughout your career, you’ve specialized in bankruptcy.

Don Golden: I have actually, except my first year I focused on Social Security Disability work. But after that first year, I started doing almost exclusively consumer bankruptcy work.

Jeff Kelly: Excellent. Excellent. Where’d you go to law school?

Don Golden: I went to law school at Thomas Cooley in Lansing, Michigan. Okay, it’s now part of Western Michigan University. But at the time, it was a private school just just a private law school.

Jeff Kelly: Yeah. Okay. And where did you undergrad?

Don Golden: you’ve ever seen me? demonstrate?

Jeff Kelly: All right.

Don Golden: Yeah. Excellent. So I went all over, I went from the New England to the Midwest to now, South, South, southeast.

Jeff Kelly: Okay, so tell me about so for those of you who don’t know, I know Don, Don are good friends, I know, we have the same business coach. And that’s how I got to know done. And I think we’re, we’re the first people sign up with you for this fresh start for life. So can you tell us a little bit here? For any of my clients who don’t know, what is fresh start, like, what’s it all about?

Don Golden: Well, so if you remember, our business coach actually gave us a book called lead for God’s sake. And I read that book, and I really felt like I was being led to do more for my clients. And it just helped them get out of debt. And I started putting some thought into it. And I, I like personal finance and things like that. So I really felt like I was being led in a direction to do more for my clients in the way of helping them after the bankruptcy was over with. So we, we want to be their guide

Transcript:

Hello, this is Jeff Kelly. And in today’s episode, I want to talk more about pride and bankruptcy. I recently met with a client, and when we were just getting ready to file our case, she looked at me and she said, You know, I should have done this years ago, but my pride just wouldn’t let me. She had ignored her problems for years and years, tried to make the minimum payments, and eventually, the debt just grew so large that the creditor started filing garnishment actions. And that’s what motor motivated her to finally pull the trigger. She just got the point where she had to pride or no pride. And after she signed the court papers, she said, You know, I just feel like this huge burden has been taken off my shoulders.

Why do so many people wait longer than they should to file bankruptcy? I believe the answer to that question is one-word pride and I get it. Because I suffer from it as well. Is all pride bad? Well, no. I mean, it’s, it’s I think it’s a good idea to take pride in your work and try to work hard and produce the best you can. You know, I don’t know if any you’ve ever seen the movie Cool Runnings. But you know, I love that scene where the one bobsled guy is trying to encourage the other guy who’s maybe kind of suffering from some self-doubt. He’s like, I look at you, I see pride. I see power. And then bleep bleep bleep. But anyway, that’s a really good movie, by the way. That’s good pride. You know, courage people stand up. But there’s a bad side of pride. And when you think about it, you know, ask yourself this question. How many divorces do you think are caused by pride? I bet it’s a lot. Why can’t people just say they’re Sorry? When they know they did wrong? Oh, I bet it’s because of pride. Why can’t people forgive and just let things go? I think it’s because of pride. Where does that kind of pride lead? Not a very good place.

I recently had an experience myself with pride episode. I had this great idea. So I thought of getting into the Ottawa River river up around Neil’s landing and kayaking with my daughter down to Rome. Now, apparently, there’s a warning sign there that we completely missed. And as soon as we got in the water, my daughter looks at me, she goes, Dad, I really hate this. This is bad idea. Let’s just turn around, we can make it. Let’s just paddle back and get out of here. And I should listen to her. I really thought she would like it. It was her first time kayaking. She had absolutely hated it right from the start. And, you know, I hate to admit that I’m wrong. Why is that? Well, pride. So, and you know, I didn’t want to be a quitter. So I’m like, I just, you know, come on, I looked at the map, and it really isn’t that far between Rome and Cartersville. How long could it possibly take? And the river? We’re in kayaks? I mean, you know, I did the math in my head, I thought, well, cars will maybe about 20 miles away. And, you know, halfway is 10 miles surely won’t take a couple hours in the river. Right? We’ve got a current, wrong wrong. Man, I was so wrong. My poor daughter, she kept asking me how much further how much further Oh, just another hour, just another hour? Well, after about four hours of paddling, we came across this nice gentleman who was on the side of the river sit and kind of high up on a bank. And I asked him, I said, Hey, buddy, do you know how much further it is

Transcript:

Intro Speaker: It’s time for KellyCanHelp hosted by Jeff Kelly, Attorney at Law with the law office of Jeffrey B. Kelly. And now here’s Jeff Kelly.

Jeff Kelly: Hello, this is Jeff Kelly. And in today’s episode, I want to answer the question, is it possible to lose your home in a chapter 7 bankruptcy case? And the answer is yes. You know, this current real estate market is unbelievable. I’ve, I’ve been in practice since 1998. And I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never seen a real estate market where somebody in Rome, Georgia can put a house on the market and it sells within a week. So, because of that real estate values have become very problematic for chapter 7 clients. Let me give you an example. Let’s say you have somebody who, you know, 10 years ago, they bought a house for $100,000. And today, the tax assessor says it’s worth 120 Well, that wouldn’t be a problem. In in Georgia, a single person can exempt $21,500, a married couple can exempt $40-43,000. So when when could it become a problem?

Jeff Kelly: Well, for one thing, even though the tax assessor says the house might be worth 120,000, it’s possible that it’s worth more, and a chapter 7 trustee. They are not bound by what the tax assessor says they’re not bound by what Zillow says, you know, honestly, they’re not even bound by what an appraiser says, a chapter 7 trustee has a strong incentive to sell your house if they can make money off of it. That’s, that’s how chapter 7 trustees generate extra income for themselves as by selling assets and paying debts in chapter 7 cases. So they usually work closely with a real estate agent. And that real estate agent has a right to drive by your house, if you’re in the middle of a chapter 7 case. And that agent may look at it and say, Hey, you know what, I know, the tax assessor says it’s worth 120. I think I can get 150 for it. So let’s say, you know, a single person is filing a case under these facts. Well, hypothetically, if that real estate agent puts that house on the market, and sells it for 150, it’s gone. Now the person who filed chapter 7 will get a check for $21,500. Because that’s the amount that we’ve exempted in this hypothetical. So they it’s not like they lose their house and have nothing. But many people who consider chapter 7 say, hey, look, if I, you know, if I wipe out all of my debts, but end up losing my house, and yeah, if I got $21,500 in my bank account, at the end of the day, that’s not a win for me, because I can’t lose this house, I don’t want to lose this house, I love this house. We’ve been here, you know, 10 years, whatever.

Jeff Kelly: You know, if that’s your situation, then you don’t want to file a Chapter 7, you just don’t, because another thing that kind of sneaks up on people that a lot of people just don’t quite get is that if you’re in the middle of a chapter 7 case, and you don’t like the way things are going, you can’t just bail out. You can’t just quit when a chapter 7 trustee has a contract on your house. It’s going going gone. Now, I’ve had a lot of clients asked me before, you know, surely this can’t possibly be real, you know, lose your house in the middle of a chapter 7 bankruptcy ca

Transcript:

Intro Speaker: It’s time for Kelly Can Help hosted by Jeff Kelly, Attorney at Law with the Law Office of Jeffrey B Kelly. And now here’s Jeff Kelly.

Jeff Kelly: Hello, this is Jeff Kelly. And here we are on January 6 2021, is the date of this recording. And today, what I would like to talk about is the current state of bankruptcy, some changes that may be coming down the pipe. So as a consequence of the elections, it does look like the democrats are going to have control over the Senate, and there is some Bankruptcy Reform that is most likely going to come down the pipe and looks like it may pass. And I don’t have all of the details yet. But one of the biggest things that is coming is that student loans are going to be dischargeable in bankruptcy, that’s going to be huge. And that’s that’s going to create a flood of cases.

Jeff Kelly: So what does this mean for people who are in debt right now? Well, one of the biggest mistakes that I see people make about filing is they just put it off too long. And it can create a lot of problems waiting too long. It and there’s no sense in doing that. It’s a free consultation to call us.

Jeff Kelly: Let me give you an example of people who wait too long they get in to fix they have some debt hanging over their head. And and they they could qualify right now today, they could wipe the debt out and get a fresh start and move on with life. But a lot of people will wait. And some things happen. People get new job, they start making good money, and then they want to file. Well, we might not be able to wipe out as much debt if you have gotten, you know, a new job a new income. And I’m seeing that a lot where people’s income has passed, picked up in the past couple months, a lot of people working overtime and so forth, that can affect us on the Means Test.

Jeff Kelly: Will there still be a means test? Once the new bankruptcy form reform laws go into place? I don’t know. When Will those laws go into place? I don’t know. So you know, the bottom line is if you need to file now is a good time. If you have a bunch of student loans hanging over your head, it potentially might be better to wait, we’ll see. I don’t know how the new law is going to impact old cases are we gonna to be able to discharge student loans in cases that were filed before the law changed? I, again, I don’t know there’s a lot of things are up in the air. But if you are in a situation where you’ve got debt hanging over your head, you need to take action. Because in Georgia, if you mess around and wait, and your creditor gets a judgment against you, they can take 25% of your net check. They can also clean out your checking account. They can also put liens on your house.

Jeff Kelly: Is it ever too late to file bankruptcy? No, it’s not. It’s not too late. But you definitely don’t want to do things like empty out your 401k and I and I get it.

Transcript:

Intro Speaker: It’s time for Kelly Can Help hosted by Jeff Kelly, Attorney at Law with the law office of Jeffrey B. Kelly. And now here’s Jeff Kelly.

Jeff Kelly: Okay, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining me on the radio show today I got a special guest, Andres Mejer. He is an immigration attorney from New Jersey. I’ve known him for years. One of the great things about immigration is you can hire him if you’d like. So I’m gonna let Andres tell us a little bit about his practice. And super great guy. Go ahead, undress.

Andres Mejer: Thank you, Jeff, thank you for having us on on the show. I really appreciate the opportunity. And yes, immigration is federal, we now have clients in 15 different states. So I’m headquartered in New Jersey. But as I was telling you, before we come on the show, out of the three clients that hired me today, not a single one was in New Jersey. You know, our practice has really changed dramatically because of COVID.

Andres Mejer: But a little little Look, I don’t usually talk about myself, but a little bit about my backstory. I was born in Santiago, Chile, I know you and I have talked about that a number of times you’d love to your time in

Jeff Kelly: cheap labor country.

Andres Mejer: It’s a great place to be. So I was born in Chile, my mother was from Chile and my father’s from Argentina. But they met and married in Israel. So I lived twice and cheela, twice in Israel, twice in the US. I came to this country, not speaking English. And then I moved to Israel as an adult, not speaking Hebrew. And then I left my family there and came back to keep to get to keep my green card in state. So any part of an immigrant journey short of being in jail? That one has had, I’ve done it at least once.

Jeff Kelly: Excellent. That is awesome. How many years have you been in practice?

Andres Mejer: So I’ve been in practice now. 16 years, I’ve been working in the law for 20 years when I was when I was in law school. I was working full time at a law firm. I was trying to figure out what what kind of law did I want to be and your laugh, but I thought I was going to be in real estate.

Jeff Kelly: Yeah,

Andres Mejer: real estate development is what interested me. And I thought I was going to be transactional. And like I’m not I’m not going to go to court. I’m like, fight for people. What No, that’s, that’s crazy. But the first law firm job I had, because I’m a fluent Spanish speaker, I was working with Spanish clients doing things that a law clerk normally does, because no one else could speak to them. And they were getting screwed. And the more I saw how they were being treated, just because they didn’t speak the language, and they didn’t understand their rights. The more I got involved with the immigrant community, and what their needs were, and I’ve done it all, whether it’s wills, a personal injury litigation, criminal litigation, I actually built my immigration practice on defending DUI clients. I went to court the first time for a traffic violation. My movers were bringing in my obviously my office furniture to my new office, I just opened up shop. And one of them had a girlfriend that had a traff

Transcript:

Hello, this is Jeff Kelly. Today is January the 29th 2021. And in today’s podcast, I want to answer the question, how will filing bankruptcy affect your cosigner? The short answer is you filing bankruptcy will damage your co signers credit, how much damage? The answer is, you’re not going to know until after you file.

Most bankruptcy attorneys are not going to answer this question for you. I recently engaged in a Facebook conversation on this topic with fellow consumer bankruptcy attorneys from all parts of the United States and I received some really good feedback. And I really appreciate the very open and honest answers I got from a lot of people. And, you know, one attorney explained that they just avoided this topic altogether with their clients by asking by stating that, hey, look, I only represent you and I don’t represent your cosigner, I’m not going to talk about it. And the reason they do that is they’re trying to basically avoid the subject. Because a lot of people if they knew the truth, that it was going to hurt their cosigner, they, they either might not file bankruptcy at that time, or might try to work something out.

Now, personally, I believe honesty is the best policy. When a client comes in and meets with me or one of my associates, we are upfront we tell the truth. It is a core value of this law firm. And I believe it’s something that really separates us from a lot of others if you don’t need to file bankruptcy.

Number one, we’re going to tell you that and then we’re going to go into some detail with you to explain why you don’t need to file I think it’s much better to be honest and open about the truth, you’re going to get much happier people you have a much happier life. And I’ve got the Google reviews to back it up, check it out. So uh, you know, another attorney said that he would, you know, point to a car out in his parking lot. And so Oh, wow, look at that car. And basically just, you know, again, try to avoid it. And I just, I just think it’s a terrible, terrible idea to sweep this issue under the rug before you file because in most consumer bankruptcy cases, the cosigner is almost always a relative, or a super close friend. Can you imagine how upset a cosigner relative friend is going to be when they go to buy a new car, and they get the big denial? Because their credit score was unexpectedly lowered? And then they figure out it was because you filed a chapter 13 and didn’t tell them anything about it? Yeah, this kind of surprised always ends with someone getting upset, and it could severely damage a close relationship. Personally, I think it’s much much much better to warn the cosigner before the case is filed. So is there anything that a cosigner can do to avoid the damage to their credit score?

Well, you know, the answer is yes, but it’s probably not gonna happen. Number one is pay off the debt, the cosigner can pay off the debt before the bankruptcy case

Transcript:

Intro Speaker: It’s time for KellyCanHelp hosted by Jeff Kelly, Attorney at Law with the Law office of Jeffrey B. Kelly. And now here’s Jeff Kelly.

Jeff Kelly: Go Alright, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got a fun guest today on the radio show. Lee Treadaway, somebody I used to work with many many many years ago. And Lee I just love that story. many months ago when I used to work at Fuller McKay. And and before I ever met you, I felt like I knew you because Ken Fuller would say that he’d go shopping for groceries at the old Piggly Wiggly that was over there behind what is now Stanley’s. And I used kana have got hired this boy when he gets out of law school named Lee Treadaway. Every time he went grocery shopping your mother was your fan brother. You got a good mother, don’t you?

Lee Treadaway: Absolutely. Absolutely. She. Yes, she stayed after Ken until he really had no choice. But for McKay, those were some fun times. They were they were fun. We all work together.

Jeff Kelly: So So now you’re you’re doing elder law. Is that right?

Lee Treadaway: Well, I’m doing I’m doing some wills and estates and Okay, trying to focus on Elder Law within that, and also a little bit on special needs trust as well.

Jeff Kelly: Yeah.

Lee Treadaway: What there’s a lot of overlap in that.

Jeff Kelly: Excellent. Excellent.

Jeff Kelly: So how many years? How many years you’ve been practicing now? It’s been a while?

Lee Treadaway: Yeah, let’s see. Um, gosh, I

Lee Treadaway: I became a member of the bar in 2004. So 16 years. It goes by quickly, man does it ever good grief it that goes by quick. So where’d you do? Where’d you do your undergrad? Yeah, so I went to University of Georgia and got a business degree from undergrad it didn’t actually worked for about 10 years and then went back to Samford University and got my law degree ever in Birmingham.

Jeff Kelly: Excellent.

Lee Treadaway: Yeah, undergrad was at UGA.

Jeff Kelly: Alright, so that’s why you’re a diehard Georgia Bulldog fan still?

Lee Treadaway: Absolutely. Roughly can last weekend, but

Jeff Kelly: I know college can be rough.

Lee Treadaway: Can they can I know. And I’ll admit it. I’m still a fan. You haven’t had it easy. The last few years.

Jeff Kelly: It’s been more than a decade. I think it’s been rough. It’s been rough. I don’t think they’ve been good since. Since we worked at fuller McKay. Unbelievable. It’s been a long time.

Jeff Kelly: Well, so now you

Lee Treadaway: don’t happen to to a nicer

Jeff Kelly: no mercy, huh. No Mercy right away. So tell me about you didn’t go straight from undergrad to law school. Right. You work a little bit in between there.

Lee Treadaway: Yeah, I had about, I said to about nine years of working in between there.

Jeff Kelly: Excellent. Excellent. Where’d you work?

Lee Treadaway: So for