It is a frustrating fact of life that whenever you need valuable professional services, you generally have to pay for them. That’s true whether you need an electrician to replace your home’s main circuit breaker panel, a dentist to give you a filling, or a bankruptcy attorney to advise and represent you in your bankruptcy case. Trying to do it yourself is somewhere between extremely unwise and impossible.
But how CAN a person who needs to file bankruptcy but can’t afford to pay creditors come up with the money to pay a bankruptcy attorney? Here is a list of essential principles to help you with this.
- Start with the right attitude: To deal with any challenge, it helps to face the truth straight on and then go from there. Accept right at the beginning that you have too much at stake to risk making all the right decisions, preparing all the paperwork, and dealing with your creditors and the bankruptcy trustee all on your own.
- Most people who file bankruptcy are represented by an attorney: Most people do manage to hire a bankruptcy attorney, which is strong evidence that there are ways to pay for that attorney.
- The best way for you to pay for a bankruptcy attorney will be unique to you: Just as your financial and life situations are not exactly like anybody else’s, your options for paying your attorney fees will be unique to your situation.
- In this situation it makes sense to first get advice and guidance about your options, and then figure out how to pay to pursue what’s best for you: Although it’s usually smart to know how you are going to pay for something before you go to the store to buy it, it’s different in this unusual situation. Why? Because you do need advice to make all the right choices, including advice about how best to pay for that advice and representation.
- Free consultations by most bankruptcy attorneys are not a marketing gimmick, but a valuable service: Consumer bankruptcy attorneys often do not charge for the initial consultation meeting because they realize that they have to be the ones to break the vicious cycle in which you really need good advice but don’t know how to pay for it.
- It takes legal advice to chart the best way to pay for your fee: At first this may sound a little odd, but it is part of your attorney’s job is to help you figure out not only a workable way for you to pay your fees but a legally appropriate way. Bankruptcy has to do with financial obligations, including what obligations you paid and didn’t pay before filing the bankruptcy. So it IS part of your attorney’s advice to you to present, in an honest and unbiased way, your options on how to pay the fees.
- Your relationship with your attorney is all about trust, including about the fees: You are putting your financial life—past, present, and future—in the hands of your attorney. One of the purposes of that initial consultation meeting is to see if you feel that trust, if the chemistry is right. If you don’t feel right about a particular attorney or firm, don’t hire them and find one that you do. And when you find that attorney who you trust with your entire financial life, you will trust him or her with how to pay to put that financial life on the right path forward.
Leinart Law Firm understands how difficult it can be to come up with fees to pay for a bankruptcy – we help our clients navigate this process every day. Our payment plans and options are customized for each person – we will sit down with you and help you come up with the best option. Let us be your trusted bankruptcy attorney, if you are in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Schedule your free and confidential consultation with Leinart Law Firm firm by calling 1-800-518-3328 or using the contact form here.
