u/Adventurous_Exam_526

Kind of a follow up to a previous post, and this is for the attorneys who lurk on here.

This may seem like an odd question, but is it ok to reach out to my lawyer and ask questions about things. Not obsessively so, but like can I email them with a question or 2 or ask them to amend my petition if something doesn’t look right?

I had a consult back in December, and wasn’t sure if I wanted to actually go through with a BK and I explored my options the next couple months. Finally in February I decided Ch7 was the best path forward and I decided to start making the payments towards my filing fee. I’m not really in a huge rush but I got it paid in full beginning of this month.

My attorney sent me the docs package and I filled it all out. Keep in mind from the time of the consult, to the time I paid in full there was little to no communication nor was I give me any advice what to follow pre filing. I just knew that once I decided to file, I needed to stop using CC which I did.

Long story short, I got the packet filled it out and submitted the requested docs my attorney asked for, and she said she’d get me over a draft within the next week or two. Totally fine by me. Well I got the draft and there was a lot of things that weren’t in her documents package that I recieved as in I didn’t know what a lot of things meant or they weren’t even asked.

Over the weekend I really scrutinized everything on the formal petition and realized there were items I needed to disclose that I hadn’t originally, and I reached back out yesterday with an update document of my own with what I’d like to disclose. Is this generally seen as OK from an attorney perspective? Am I ok to ask questions here and there and make amendments as needed without it going to extra billable hours? I feel I’ve been a very low maintenance client thus far and I’ve done everything in a complete and timely manner, I just want to make sure this goes as smoothly as possible for everyone, but I don’t want to be a pain.

CH7 - OR

Long story short, I made some very bad decisions in 2024-2025, and racked up nearly 6 figures of CC debt across multiple banks. I never missed a payment but it got to a point where my minimums were like $3k a month. It just wasn’t feasible at that point, so I finally contacted a BK lawyer in Dec 2025 just see if ch7 was an option. With the amount of equity in my home, I figured no way and I was right at income cutoff. Luckily OR has a very generous homestead exemption and the medical income levels went up a decent amount this year.

I finally paid off the filing fee earlier this month, and we’re getting all the docs together to file and I’m starting to get cold feet. I just feel so wrong about all this. In 20 years I never missed single payment and held an 800+ credit score the entire time. I finally decided to stop paying a couple months ago and in that short period of time my credit score is down to like 500. I’ve paid 10s of thousands back to these banks but I still just feel kind of gross. I know this needs to be done but I’m also afraid I’ve done something wrong.

Everything has been such a blur and I’ve been so stressed over all this I’m afraid I’m going to leave something out and they’ll try to accuse me of fraud. My lawyer is really pushing to get things started and to file next week, but I still feel like I kind of want to wait and separate myself from the debt I’ve incurred even further. What’s crazy is it’s been less than 3 months in most of these cases and I’m already getting settlement offers of 30-50 cents on the dollar, and these are high dollar amounts. I wish I could afford to just settle and then pay the tax offset, but there’s just no way. That would still be 30-40k in total.

I don’t think I’m at risk of getting sued by anyone just yet, and while the calls and emails suck, I’m really not getting that many of them.

Would I be wrong for telling my lawyer I think I want to wait a bit longer before I file my case? I also want to be absolutely sure all my docs are correct and I didn’t just rush throwing them together so we could file.

Edit: like there’s so much stuff I feel like I’ve been doing that the lawyer never even advised me about that is falling into a grey area. Nothing is fraudulent, but I’m sure it’ll be something that needs to be disclosed and I would have never done any of it had I known it would affect the case. Things like selling items around the house or guns to pay bills and my lawyer fees. Everything was sold at fair market value, but she never even mentioned these are the type of things I’d have to disclose. I just don’t want add any undue scrutiny to my case.