Meeting of Creditors

We had our "Meeting of Creditors" this week, which is basically this: the bankruptcy petitioner and his/her/their attorney meet in the office of a court-appointed trustee with any creditors that may wish to dispute, prevent, or otherwise discuss the bankruptcy proceeding. It's intended to be an opportunity for creditors to show why they beleive that they should still be repaid the debt that is owed to them. In this case -- as I suspect in most bankruptcy cases of individuals or couples -- there were no creditors in attendance.

The meeting went something like this:

9:00 am: My wife and I arrived at the government building (it didn't even take place in an actual courthouse) thirty minutes prior to our scheduled hearing. We were the first people to arrive, including attorney and the trustee. We began waiting in chairs in the hallway.

9:15 am: The trustee and his recorder arrived.

9:18 am: Another petitioning couple arrived and seated themselves in the hallway.

9:20 am: Our attorney arrived and suggested we go into the trustee's meeting room. My wife and I took a seat in the waiting chairs in the meeting room while our attorney discussed another client with the trustee.

9:25 am: Noting that there was no one else in the meeting room, including the two petitioners that were scheduled before us, the trustee called us forward to begin our hearing.

The hearing process included presenting our driver's licenses and social security cards so that the trustee could verify our identity. We then stated our names for the record. We rose our right hand and were sworn in. The trustee then reviewed our bankruptcy petition, asking a few questions about an automobile loan and the automobiles we currently own, as well as one or two minor debts. He reviewed our income tax statement from last year (which my attorney had forgotten to print for the meeting, but had the TIF file I emailed him on his notebook computer, and the trustee reviewed the file on his computer).

Before we knew it, the trustee was rattling off something about it being a "no asset" case (which means that he has determined that we have no assets worthy of the court forcing us to sell to satisy some of our debt -- a good thing), and that he was recommending discharge of our debts and we should receive the final documents in 45 to 60 days.

9:30 am: My wife and I were once again standing in the hallway talking to our attorney about the final pre-discharge debtor counseling that is required and what to do about creditors who continue to send us demands for payment.

Which, by the way, might be worth mentioning. Not all creditors will discontinue trying to collect from you during a bankruptcy proceeding, even though they are required by law to stop contacting you. My attorney recommended that we first call the creditor when we recieve a notice and tell them that we have filed for bankruptcy and provide them with the case number. Then, he said, if they continue to contact us, we should forward it to his office so that he can send them a letter threatening to file against the creditor for damages if they don't cease contact.

It was all very interesting, very fast, and very painless. The hardest part of the whole process was finding a place to park the car outside the government building before the hearing.