A member of both the Central District Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys Association and the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys, Catherine Christiansen is a bankruptcy attorney who practices in Long Beach, California. In this article, the Western State University graduate, who practices at the Christiansen Law Office, explains what debtors should do to prepare for their first meeting with a bankruptcy attorney.
Meeting with your bankruptcy attorney for the first time does not have to be stressful or confusing. But to make life as easy for yourself as possible, it is a good idea to bring all the documentation that you can find with you to that initial meeting.
A driver’s license is really the main thing that every client needs to bring to his meeting with an attorney. But I also think it is a good idea to start coming up with a general budget of what it costs for you to live on a day-to-day or monthly basis.
Although I require quite a bit of documentation from clients throughout the bankruptcy process, little is needed during the first meeting or the initial intake. Pretty much anything that is necessary for a client to bring during that appointment should not be too strenuous to dig up or find.
If you have any foreclosure notices in your possession, or any lawsuits that have been filed against you or anything else that needs to be brought to your attorney’s immediate attention then it is a good idea to bring that documentation with you to the meeting.
I also advice people to start searching for their Social Security card as soon as possible after they decide that they may need to file. Oftentimes, people don’t know where that card is in their home. But it is important that clients either find theirs or order a new one from the Social Security office because the actual card is required for the creditor’s meeting.
Other things that are a good idea to bring with you when you are meeting with a bankruptcy attorney are pay stubs. If you still have copies of your last couple of pay stubs, then those are great things to bring to your first meeting with an attorney. And if you can find your tax returns from the past couple of years, then I would definitely recommend bringing those too.
I actually supply my clients with a document organizer once they have retained my legal services. The benefit of a document organizer in this case is that it helps them see a list of the papers that they’ll need in order to file for bankruptcy, and it gives them a way to organize those papers and make sure they have everything they need before heading to their next meeting.
A lot of clients don’t necessarily have all of this documentation at their fingertips, so I also do due diligence searches of public records whenever someone retains our services in this office. Those due diligence searches will pull up all sorts of things, including the answers to some questions that people might not have been sure about, or some documents that a client maybe was not able to find in his home. If there are any old lawsuits that a client is still facing, for instance, or if there was a bankruptcy in this person’s past that he forgot to mention, then that would all show up during the due diligence search.
After I have gone through that, the next thing I typically require for clients to bring me are their credit card statements and bank statements. And the reason I require these is because I need to review them myself and make sure all the figures I have been given are accurate.
A lot of times people do not really remember or they don’t understand some of the charges they have racked up on their credit cards. Or in other cases, they may not understand why a certain type of charge such as a cash advance showed up differently on a credit card statement. So by taking a look at the statement myself, I am able to point out certain red flags and help the clients themselves understand their finances better.
For myself as their attorney, looking at all of these types of statements also gives me a clearer idea of what kind of debt we are dealing with, and it lets me know whether there are any debts that might be able to be discharged by the court.
Based on what we have uncovered at that point, and how much more we need to find, I will begin asking questions to see whether there is any area that we may have missed or any area where more documentation may still need to be found and pulled out.
Overall, I would say that I do require a lot of documentation from my clients, mostly because that is the best way for me to see a clear picture of what we are talking about with their finances. But I don’t necessarily require all that much during the initial intake. At that first appointment, the types of documentation that a client is advised to bring are pretty simple and straightforward.
This article is for informational purposes only. You should not rely on this article as a legal opinion on any specific facts or circumstances, and you should not act upon this information without seeking professional counsel. Publication of this article and your receipt of this article does not create an attorney-client relationship.
