FAQ's

The rule of thumb is that there is about a $300 monthly payment for every $10,000 of debt you want to include in your Ch-128 plan (which includes all attorney fees and trustee administration expenses which you also pay through your plan). Call or email me for an exact estimate of what your monthly payments would be with the debts you wish to include.

Yes

Normally, yes – but I offer clients an option for sending in their payments directly to the trustee’s office themselves as a “self-pay,” keeping their employers and nosy co-workers out of it entirely.

No (sorry).

I can usually get your paperwork all ready within two days (often times the same day – I work really fast) after you submit the required personal and creditor information that I need. After the initial pleadings are signed and notarized, it normally takes about a week to file the case. It then takes the trustee several weeks after that to get your monthly payments going. You do not have to pay your listed creditors or the trustee’s office before then. (If you do not hear anything from the trustee in a month after filing, get a hold of one of us to find out what’s going on with your case – court clerks sometimes misplace or even lose the court files, and those long delays in getting essential paperwork back to us results in higher monthly-payment amounts for the client than originally determined!)

See next FAQ below and “IMPACT ON CREDIT” in the outline.

Bankruptcy is federal law and allows for the discharge (forgiveness) of debt. It can wreck your credit score for at least ten years. Chapter 128 is a Wisconsin state law that does not discharge debt; it functions almost exactly the same for you as debt consolidation does, with intermediate credit-report scores of “I -7” or “R-7” indicating “debt consolidation” lasting up to only seven years. Chapter 128 is a legal action through your county court system in which you tell the court how much debt you need to pay off, then send in monthly payments to a trustee who distributes your money to your creditors until they’re paid off. With debt consolidation, you must go to a private lender and ask them to pay off your trouble debts with what amounts to a brand-new loan to you which you pay back to them with a new interest rate, “service” and other miscellaneous fees which can be considerably high and even fluctuate with market trends and rates over time. Obviously, getting into more debt to pay off existing debts is never the best idea. And click HERE to read a JSOnline article from October of 2008 and learn how it can be an even worse choice for you to decide to try to work with a “debt settlement” company to reduce your debt!

With Ch. 128, you only pay one, low court filing fee, you pay me  a low “flat” fee and you pay a set amount in trustee fees over the life of the repayment plan. It does not change or fluctuate over time, unless you want to add or remove creditors from your plan (see next FAQ below). It’s supervised by a county-court judge and a court-appointed trustee . That means it’s a safe, reliable way to reduce the debt you want to down to nothing in three or fewer years with no unexpected fees or other costs cropping up to take you by surprise at any time!

Yes, debts incurred before filing your case, but which were not originally included, may be added into your plan after filing for an additional fee (you may not add new debts that you incur after we get your case filed). Just email me if you would like to add (or even remove) one or more debts.

Yes

Some, yes. Overdue Wisconsin income taxes may be paid back through a Ch. 128, but not federal taxes that are overdue (federal taxes, judgments, etc. are all protected against Ch-128 filings via the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution). Some Wisconsin municipalities will accept payment of overdue property taxes through a Ch. 128, but not all of them – property taxes are technically secured debt, so they cannot be included as a matter of right because Ch. 128 does not permit the repayment of secured debts, unless the creditor agrees to accept repayment through a Ch. 128.

No, I do not “work” with your creditors. I help you invoke the legal authority and contempt powers of Wisconsin State Circuit Courts to tell your creditors that they’re going to accept repayment of your debts owed to them without accruing interest or penalties over the course of three or fewer years, that they’re not going to garnish your wages, etc.

Since I started handling these back in 1998, I have not had any clients be unable to get a car or home loan because they filed under this law. However, one downside does appear to be that you end up paying a higher interest rate.

Yes, the trustee provides that.

No, not normally. Those are “secured” debts, but they may be included if the creditor agrees to accept payment through your plan. Vehicle debts may also be included if the creditor has already repo’d the vehicle, and a house mortgage may be included if it has already been foreclosed on and is not too big a debt that it cannot be feasibly included in your Ch-128 repayment plan.

No, all of your property and income are exempt from attachment under this law.

No. You can include as little debt or as much as you want, so long as you can handle the monthly payments.

No. Again, this is not federal bankruptcy where such restrictions apply. There is no cap on earnings that disqualifies you from being able to make this law work for you.

Contact the trustee’s office – the trustee is responsible for all matters and issues associated with the collection and distribution of your monthly payments.

Commencing a law suit to obtain a judgment on the amount owed them is the only thing they can do which the law allows for debt in a Ch-128 plan. You can go to the court date armed with your Ch-128 case number, especially if  you feel that the creditor has not listed the correct amount owed. (Because the debt was included in the client’s Ch. 128, the client will not have to make any financial disclosure or answer any questions.) Once a judgment is obtained, the client should let the trustee  know the judgment amount. By law, the trustee then inserts the judgment amount into the Ch-128 payment plan in place of the original amount that the client listed in his or her affidavit of debts, and the judgment then gets paid in full through the Ch. 128.

Unless you’re a “self-pay,” you must contact the trustee right away and let him or her know. If you lose your job and do not know when you’ll be employed again, you may continue to fund your plan on your own as a “self-pay” for as long as you can afford to. If you cannot afford to continue to fund your plan, see the next FAQ below . . .

The trustee will move the Court to dismiss your case if you are more than 30 days late with a payment. But you are always free to contact the trustee’s office to negotiate something to keep your plan alive in that situation.

You may continue to fund your plan until completion, with all attendant protections and creditor prohibitions remaining intact.

Yes, as long as you meet the federal eligibility criteria required for filing bankruptcy.

You can make some money off it in federal court! The first step is to dispute any inaccuracy with the credit reporting company who is reporting an inaccuracy on a trade line in your credit report, especially if it’s showing “bkcy.” The Credit Reporting Agency (“CRA”) then communicates with the “data furnisher” (the offending creditor) who either fixes the trade line to not say “bkcy” or “verifies” the trade line as reported. When the latter happens, there is a 15 USC §1681i and 1681s-2(b) claim that can produce a damage claim for you, and attorneys fees and costs. Federal law requires that a consumer (you) notify the CRA about the inaccuracy and getting it “fixed.” The law requires the CRA to contact the creditor who is reporting “bkcy” or any other inaccuracy, and see if the creditor will fix it. If the creditor will not fix it, the CRA responds to the consumer that the “bkcy” or whatever other inaccuracy is, in fact, true, and “verifies” the report. In these cases, the law describes the creditor as the “data furnisher” and, at this point for a former Ch-128 client, there is an immediate FCRA claim against both the CRA and the “data furnisher” (the creditor). I work with a nationally-recognized law firm in Minnesota which is quite ready, willing and able to take such offending creditors to the cleaners for you in federal court here in Wisconsin! There’s no payment of attorney fees unless you win, so let me know if I can help you try to get some money out of offending creditors who will not follow the law and keep your credit reports messed up.