My original post can be found HERE.
First of all, thank you all for the advice. It's been incredible and the outpouring of support and encouragement has been unexpected and welcome. I'm sorry if my responses have been few and far between but my inbox was inundated with messages and between work and the kids, it's been next to impossible to stay on top of it all. I promise I read everything though. In fact, the wife and I made lists of the suggestions and had some serious discussions about what things we could implement and how... and realized we're at a breaking point. We spoke to our credit union about debt counseling options (like several of you suggested) and pulled our credit reports, only to discover that debts from back when we lost our home to foreclosure and were evicted and first became homeless are still haunting us and compiling with the current debt we were already aware of. My wife has been crying a lot since we saw it all spelled out on paper. Aside from winning the lottery, our only option at this point appears to be bankruptcy.
We've always weighed our failures and successes against the theory that "Well, at least we didn't file bankruptcy!" because after numerous layoffs, a foreclosure, an eviction, a repossession, years of homelessness and dealing with medical debts from having a child with long-term health issues I guess it gave us some kind of misleading silver lining.
So needless to say, the realization that we actually NEED to file bankruptcy has been, well, heartbreaking. Especially for my wife. But we've been reading all the inbox messages together and many of you suggested it and shared your own stories about bankruptcy and how it helped you overcome your own negative circumstances. I can't express enough how much that helped us. Thank you for that.
So now my request for advice has evolved. How do we start this bankruptcy process? And how can we do it right and affordably? We've contacted bankruptcy lawyers and so far they all charge around $1,500 and want payment up front... which we will never be able to afford. I found websites that promise discount bankruptcy options, like http://ift.tt/2fULZC1 only to ask about them on r/Bankruptcy and discover it's most likely fraud. Go figure. But that's why I asked before making any moves. Does anyone have any suggestions or recommendations though? I don't even know where to start, I just know that the sooner I get the ball rolling the sooner we can get through it. Thank you again.
Submitted October 08, 2017 at 04:45PM by ILoatheYams http://ift.tt/2yys0ol
