WILL I LOOSE ANY OF MY PROPERTY? (Florida)
You may have heard that you loose all of your property in a Bankruptcy
but that is simply not true.
In a chapter 7, you are permitted to keep certain property called as Exempt. Any
property that's not exempt can be sold by a court appointed trustee and used to
pay creditors. In the great majority of cases, people don't loose a thing.
In Florida your homestead is exempt. That means your home is protected as long
as you pay your mortgage.
While cars are not exempt, if your payments are up to date and the car is worth
less than you owe on it you won't loose it.
Each person filing a Chapter 7 can keep up to $1000 of personal property
calculated at garage sale value. So unless you have a lot of very new, very
expensive stuff that's already paid off, you probably have nothing to worry
about.
If you do have a lot of assets that are not exempt, you may consider Chapter 13.
One aspect of chapter 13 is that, as long as you live up to your part of the
bankruptcy, you don't have to worry about loosing any property. The difference
between the two chapters is that in a Chapter 7, you don't have to pay your
creditors anymore. In a Chapter 13, a payment plan will be set where the
creditors get paid something.
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