Family Survives Through Bankruptcy

[I:http://www.uniquearticlewizard.com/extras/pics/davewalkerimage16.jpg]“”I was always torn when the kids begged me to play Monopoly”, Jackie H. owned during a recent conversation. “I desperately wanted to share in their fleeting childhood fun but I literally didn’t have the stomach for that particular game at that moment in my life.”

Watching her two elementary school aged children flip over a property title card and mortgage themselves to the hilt in order to stay in the game was more than Jackie could bear to be around. She was terrified her golden haired children would grow up to deal with crippling debt, an overload of which she and her husband, Jim, were straining under. Their recently launched retail business was not paying the bills while requiring one hundred percent of each partner’s time. The slippery slope of putting the kids’ school shoes and grocery purchases on plastic began, always with the thought that next month things would start improving.

When the business’ gears finally ground to a halt and Jackie and Jim were back at working for someone else, it was clear that their debt accumulation was a staggering load that would haunt them for many years to come. In fact, just making the minimum payments on all their accounts would barely allow them to keep their heads above water. Jackie said her biggest worry was the very real possibility of having to tell the children that they were going to lose their home.

The delicate thread of maintaining minimum payments on maxed out revolving credit was broken the night Jim fell at work on his shift and ended up in the hospital for several days with a head injury. Jackie winces when she recalls the arrival of the first hospital bill in the mail. They hadn’t been able to afford medical insurance for quite some time.

Both Jackie and Jim are educated and experienced people. Jackie has a business degree and Jim worked in a generational family owned business for several years after graduating from college. They both were aware that the entrepreneurial life was loaded with risk but it was a road they were willing to take and sacrifice for. But in the end, energy, great ideas and immeasurable hard work were not enough to carry the day. Too little capitalization and too many circumstances outside of their control closed in on them. And still despite all, the dreaded word “bankruptcy” was avoided at all costs.

It wasn’t until Jackie awoke to the fact that she and her husband were breaking under the burden and slipping into incapacitating depression, that she decided it was time to take a look at a previously unconsidered route. For her children’s sake, she knew she needed to take charge. “You are willing to do things for your children that you never before thought possible,” Jackie explains. She went hunting for a reliable bankruptcy lawyer even though at first it went against every fiber in her being.

“I was a mess during my first meeting with the attorney. I couldn’t stop apologizing for our sorry situation, as though I still had some control over it. I couldn’t believe the flood of emotion I struggled with as we went over our family’s failed financial statement with this stranger.” Jackie went through more than a few tissues in the meeting but knew she had done the right thing when her attorney said, “There is light at the end of the tunnel.”

After reviewing all of their options, the different forms of credit negotiating and types of bankruptcy filing, Jackie and Jim were directed by their attorney to file for Chapter 7 as the best solution for their situation. Jim, not the kind of man who finds it easy to talk about the subject, will tell you this is the hardest thing he has every had to do so far in life. “Your self image is severely dented in this process. But when you measure that against no longer being able to function as a provider for your family or as a parent to your children, the choice becomes clear.” It is in cases like this, where a family is enabled to survive, that the original intent of bankruptcy law is put into practice.

Jackie will tell you that both she and Jim have been hurt by the whole experience but she also notes that they are able to get a little sleep now. “It was the struggle leading up to the filing, not the filing itself, that was the nightmare,” she explains. Their attorney has also made it possible for them to not lose their modest home in the process. “We have a lot of hard work ahead of us in the future to make up for that dark period,” Jackie says, smiling faintly. “But at least our kids have been spared losing their home, or worse yet, their family.