Debt Collectors can text you, email you, and contact you on social media!

The federal agency Consumer Financial Protection Bureau doesn’t seem to be protect you much when they passed new rules that let debt collectors email you, text you, and message you on social media.

Read article below by Attorney Peter Francis Geraci and more @ https://www.infotapes.com/Articles

The federal agency Consumer Financial Protection Bureau doesn’t seem to be protect you much when they passed new rules that let debt collectors email you, text you, and message you on social media. They do have to identify themselves as debt collectors. On social media, they can send you a fried request. They have to give you the option to opt out of being contacted online. Any messages have to be private, not on you public or contacts page.

The good news is that you will be more aware of collection activities, so you can do something about your financial mess before you get sued or garnished. Of course, most people who have debt collectors contacting them don’t do much of anything if it is just one small debt. But if you have $10,000 or more in consumer debt, outside of student loans, and you are getting emails and texts, you can be sure that it just isn’t going away, and debts have at least a 5 year statute of limitation before the debt is to old to collect

Chapter 7 and 13 bankruptcy stop all collection efforts during the bankruptcy proceedings, and stop all collection permanently on debts you obtain a discharge for. The sooner you contact Geraci Law if you have over $10,000 in debt you can’t pay, the sooner you will be able to decide what to do.

Dial 1-800-CALL-PFG for a free phone mini-consultation, or make an appointment online 24/7 at www.infotapes.com. Bankruptcy laws are in place to help you. Who knows bankruptcy like Geraci Law? Geraci Law has 30,000 5-star reviews since November 2016!

Read ALL ABOUT DEBT RELIEF at www.bankruptcybookbypeterfrancisgeraci.com.

Geraci Law Oak Park

You can schedule an appointment in person at the Geraci Law Oak Park office at 7015 W. North Ave, Oak Park IL 60302. 2 blocks east of Harlem. Buona Beef is on the corner, across from Starbucks. Or meet any of our Geraci Law attorneys virtually!

Geraci Law Oak Park team is ready to help you with your debt! Meet our Geraci Law Oak Park team.

Attorney Frank Hernandez – 865 Reviews

Attorney Frank Hernandez started at Geraci Law over 20 years ago. He is fluent in Spanish and is learning to speak German and Italian. He is a father and is a former Officer in the United States Army. He is a supervising attorney and responsible for Geraci Law Berwyn and Oak Park offices.

Attorney Hernandez trains young attorneys and staff. He has extensive knowledge of bankruptcy law and works tirelessly to find the best solution for his clients. Attorney Hernandez is also a partner of Geraci, Arreola, & Hernandez. He has helped personal injury and malpractice clients obtain settlements in the millions of dollars.

He met a family of five living in a basement apartment. They did not have a vehicle and could barely afford rent. With the help of Geraci, Arreola & Hernandez, the family received a $7.7 million dollar settlement. They purchased a house and all the latest health aides and devices to make their disabled son comfortable.

Attorney Lizette Villegas – 811 Reviews

Attorney Lizette Villegas is a senior attorney at Geraci Law. She provides client consultations and then prepares and files petitions and plans. Attorney Villegas is a skilled petition preparer and is responsible for some of the firm’s most complicated cases.

She graduated with Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology and Latin American Studies from DePaul University and went on to earn her Juris Doctor from DePaul University. Attorney Villegas is fluent in Spanish and beloved by clients. Her client reviews describe her as, “professional,” “wonderful,” and “fast.” She will work to find the best solution for her clients.

Attorney Wylie Mok – 1,367 Reviews

Wylie is a Senior Attorney with Geraci Law and graduated with honors from UIC John Marshall Law School in 2007 and was an editor on The John Marshall Law Review. Prior to that, Wylie graduated from Boston College in 2003 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Sociology and Philosophy.

Wylie started at Geraci Law in 2008 and since then has helped thousands of people get out of debt. Wylie has interned for the Illinois State’s Attorney in the Juvenile Protection Division and the City of Chicago Department of Law Labor Division. Wylie is liked by his clients for his outgoing and easy to talk to personality and his meticulous attention to detail.

When not hard at work caring for his clients, Wylie loves to cook, play the piano and guitar, and take his nieces and nephews to the movies, roller coaster parks, or baseball games.

Read ALL ABOUT DEBT RELIEF at www.bankruptcybookbypeterfrancisgeraci.com.

Beverages & Budgeting

Beverages & Budgeting – grab a drink and let’s take a look at your monthly expenses, let’s see if Geraci Law can help!

Grab a cold one or a warm one and watch Attorney Peter Francis Geraci’s video on budgeting. Weekends are a great time to sit down with the bills over a iced or warm beverage!

Read ALL ABOUT DEBT RELIEF at www.bankruptcybookbypeterfrancisgeraci.com.

Bill Consolidation, Loan Modification, Credit Counseling, Debt Settlement Fraud Schemes

From Chapter 3 of Attorney Peter Francis Geraci’s, “The Complete Book on Bankruptcy” read more @ https://www.bankruptcybookbypeterfrancisgeraci.com/

This is an easy one. Because most stuff other than bankruptcy is fraudulent. That means someone somewhere, on the internet, or maybe in Russia, or maybe your own bank, wants your money, and will say anything to get it.

1. “bill consolidation” is usually a fraud scheme There is no way to “consolidate” all your bills into one lower payment you can afford, pay your vehicles and mortgage and tax debt first, and stop every single creditor from bothering you, adding late charges, or suing you. No way. None. Nada. Except for Chapter 13 bankruptcy. Oh, there’s that word again “bankruptcy.”

2. “Loan modification” Fraud schemes like “Legal Helpers Loan Modification” just stole people’s money and disappeared with millions. Banks usually string you along for months and lose your paperwork, making things worse. Then all they do is take your 30 year loan and turn it into a 40 year loan to “get” you a lower payment. Great, now you’ll die before you pay them off and they’ll get your house back after collection mostly interest payments.

3. “Credit Counseling” Possibly the worst fraud. Some of them pose as law firms. Some are “lawyers” who really should be in jail. Being a lawyer makes them try to take as much as the first year’s payments up front as fees”. They usually last a year before getting indicted and put out of business.

4. “Debt settlement” Definitely the worst. Run, do not walk, as fast as you can from these skunks. Legal Helpers Debt Resolution” and others stole $50 million or more and faded into the night. Their imitators are still around, and so are the lawyers involved. They only lost their law licenses for a couple years. Nice payday on your money!

All these schemes play on your guilty, embarrassment and confusion. They can’t stop late fees, repossessions, lawsuits, foreclosures, license suspension, or anything else. So, beware of “bill consolidation, mortgage modifiers, debt settlement and credit counseling”. We usually see folks who have paid $3,000 to $5,000 to bill consolidators, and have nothing to show to it, when they could have filed Chapter 7 or 13 and really solved their problems and gotten a true fresh start.

Bankruptcy is very predictable. Everything is in writing, and while there are a lot of stupid lawyers who do lose $3000 or $5000 of their client’s money in Chapter 7’s, and take Chapter 13 cases that fail quickly after they get paid, Geraci Law does not engage in shady practices. So why pay the same, and not get the name? Ask your friends and family, and even your boss at work. Chances are they’ll say, “talk to Geraci Law.”

Read ALL ABOUT DEBT RELIEF at www.bankruptcybookbypeterfrancisgeraci.com

Thankruptcy

Read about Thankruptcy!

There’s a lot to be thankful for. Geraci Law is thankful to our clients and the ability to help people receive a fresh start. We have a phrase at Geraci Law called Thankruptcy! Our clients are so happy with their experience, they don’t say Bankruptcy they say – Thankruptcy!

Check out our Thankruptcy video below!

Can I Get Rid of a Vehicle By Filing Bankruptcy?

Sometimes you just don’t want a vehicle. It may be worth far less than you owe, or it may be a junk that costs too much to repair. So the question is, how do you get rid of it and get something else? You’re probably not going to just get rid of the vehicle and walk or take the bus. So there are a variety of situations, and you need good legal advice before you make a false move.

Title loans Do you have an old vehicle with a title loan? If you do, the title loan company has a lien on the title. They will want you to pay them before they release the title. If the vehicle doesn’t run, or has been in an accident, you can’t junk it unless you get the title. Title loan companies seldom will take a vehicle back, rarely even repossess vehicles, because they don’t loan you enough money to make it worthwhile. If you file a bankruptcy, we can provide that you surrender the vehicle, then file a procedure called a motion to exempt and redeem. The court values the vehicle, and all you have to do is pay the value of the vehicle to the title company in which they are required to give you the title. This works very well when you have a junker is only worth $100 salvage value.

Under water Second situation that is very common is that you have a vehicle where you have a loan on it, in the loan payoff is much more than the vehicle is worth, and you don’t want it. Let’s say you bought a used car, and it’s now worth $8000. But you have 40 payments of $350 left to pay, or $14,000, the payoff and that depending upon how long you’ve financed it for, might be as much is $11,000 or $12,000. So if you wanted to give the vehicle back to the finance company, they would sell it at auction, probably $4000, and soak you with the auction costs, if you credit for the $4000 sales price, and you’d end up owing 8000 on the repossessed vehicle. Chapter 7 filing can eliminate that $8000 deficiency.

So Chapter 7 works very well when you owe a lot more than the vehicle is worth. If you want the over financed vehicle in a chapter 7, sometimes, we can make a deal, and a reaffirmation. So you can either surrender a vehicle that’s over financed and eliminate the deficiency, or possibly we can negotiate a better deal in bankruptcy, but you have to be willing, under Chapter 7 to surrender it if they don’t give you a better deal. There is another option called 722 redemption, similar to the junker, but if the value of the vehicle is $8000, you have to come up with the full value of the vehicle, or finance it, and if you do not come up with the $8000 722 redemption, you probably be financing it at 30% interest which is a terrible deal and you’d be right back where you started.

Chapter 13 The third situation involves keeping the vehicle, and filing chapter 13 to pay what the vehicle is worth, if the vehicle is over two and half years old, and even if it’s not 2 ½ years old to pay it at the prime rate +2%. Now if that sounds complicated, it is. One problem that we are running into is people are financing vehicles for 72 or 84 months, and then coming in to file a chapter 13, which can only last 60 months. They may even have a 0% interest rate. So if you have a long way to pay on a vehicle, and you’ve already got 0% interest, chapter 13 doesn’t help you. Depending upon your income, it may be wise you can qualify for chapter 7, to get rid of this monster and get a reasonably priced vehicle with a low payment.

There’s a lot more to vehicles in bankruptcy. Geraci law lawyers have filed over 100,000 bankruptcy cases, many of which involve cars, both chapter 7 and chapter 13. If your only debt is a car, you should not be doing a bankruptcy. But if your problem is greater than just the car payment, let’s look at what filing a Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 can do about your whole picture, and where the vehicle fits in.

That’s why you need an experienced Geraci law bankruptcy lawyer to figure all this stuff out.

Read ALL ABOUT DEBT RELIEF at www.bankruptcybookbypeterfrancisgeraci.com

When Will Creditors Stop Bothering Me?

If you are having trouble with bill payments, you should get a consultation with an experienced bankruptcy attorney before you make more payments to creditors.

Check out Chapter 20 in Attorney Peter Francis Geraci’s “Complete Book on Bankruptcy.” This chapter is below, read more @ https://www.bankruptcybookbypeterfrancisgeraci.com/

CHAPTER #20 When Will Creditors Stop Bothering Me?

The minute the bankruptcy case is filed. In the meantime, don’t talk to them, leave them on the answering machine. If they call you at work, get their info, give them your home number, and say “My employer does not allow calls at work, please call me at home.” These are magic words under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act that require them to stop calling you at work. You can tell them that!

After we have prepared a petition listing your debts and assets, and prepared answers to required questions about your personal actions in relation to money, the bankruptcy petition is filed with the Clerk of the Bankruptcy Court. Of course, your attorney fee must be paid in full, unless you have made other arrangements. After you have paid your attorney, you pay the filing fee, or court cost. It is about $300.00 (When I started practicing bankruptcy law, in 1974, the court cost was only $30.00.) This must be paid in the form of a money order or cashier check payable to the Clerk of U.S. Bankruptcy Court, since the Clerk does not take personal checks.

After the Clerk has stamped a bankruptcy case number, or docket number, on the petition, notice can be sent out to all creditors that you are under the jurisdiction of the Bankruptcy Court. Then, Federal law requires that all collection action stop.

After you have made up your mind what to do, I generally advise you to stop paying all creditors except the ones which will survive a bankruptcy. If you are having trouble with bill payments, you should get a consultation with an experienced bankruptcy attorney before you make more payments to creditors.

You may be wasting your money right now by making minimum payments on bills that don’t go down after you make the payment, or you may be paying money to creditors that you will get rid of, instead of creditors that you must pay.

It is important to understand that thinking about filing bankruptcy, or even talking about it, is not the same as giving money to an attorney and actually having a docket number assigned by the Clerk of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court. Even giving money to an attorney is not enough. The case actually has to be filed with the Clerk. It is then that the provisions of the Bankruptcy Code which protect you from creditor harassment, bill collectors, wage assignments and lawsuits come into effect.

Those provisions are briefly known as the “automatic stay” provisions. This protection is known as the automatic stay, because the Bankruptcy Code provides that all creditor action is automatically stopped, or stayed, when a petition is filed with the Clerk of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court. This “automatic stay” is truly automatic, and even if a creditor does not know a bankruptcy case has been filed, you are protected from their actions.

For instance, if money is taken out of our paycheck by a creditor after the date a bankruptcy petition has been filed, it must be put back as soon as you notify your payroll department that you were under the protection of the automatic stay provisions of the Bankruptcy Code at the time the money was deducted.

I routinely provide my clients with notices entitled “Automatic Stay”, which state the language of the Code. I mail them to the client when the case is filed, so that the client can notify payroll, if necessary, or tell the docket number to any bill collector who calls. Sometimes clients get these in the mail, and even though we have discussed it thoroughly, they call up and say, “What are all these papers? Do you mean I have to notify my creditors? What am I paying you for?

I then explain again that this is for your benefit, so that you quickly have something in your hand to give to anyone who wants proof that you have filed a bankruptcy petition. Creditors and payroll departments will immediately stop any action if they know definitely that a bankruptcy has been filed.

Problem: Keith has a wage assignment from a finance company, and all his creditor cards are behind and bill collectors are calling him constantly.

The Peter Francis Geraci Chapter 7 or 13 Solution: The filing of any bankruptcy petition stops all creditor action. When Keith’s bankruptcy case is filed, the wage assignment has to stop, and no one can even call him on the telephone.

Read ALL ABOUT DEBT RELIEF at www.bankruptcybookbypeterfrancisgeraci.com

What Does Bankruptcy Cost?

A lot less than paying debt that you can’t pay!

Check out Chapter 9 of Attorney Peter Francis Geraci’s “Complete Book on Bankruptcy” at https://www.bankruptcybookbypeterfrancisgeraci.com/

CHAPTER #9 What Does Bankruptcy Cost?

A lot less than paying debt that you can’t pay. Anyone can come up with $900 or $1000 to put down on a Chapter 7, and pay the rest over time. Anyone can come up with the court costs to file a Chapter 13, and pay the rest in with their Chapter 13 payment.

Every lawyer charges exactly the same for Chapter 13, so don’t bother shopping for fees for Chapter 13. Why? In almost every court, the court rules provide for a standard fee for all services. So, it’s not the fee that you use to pick out an attorney.

Same with Chapter 7. Some people think everyone with a law license is the same. That’s why the jails are full. Lots of people who don’t know how to pick a decent attorney. People who file bankruptcy often have no confidence in themselves or their family or their budgets, and panic! They think, “I have to pay a big fee all at once and I have no money”.

If you panic, you might call every lawyer who advertises bankruptcy and say “How much is a bankruptcy”? If you actually get an answer to that, here is who you might probably be are talking to:

A lawyer who got fired or could not work with anyone so he paid $500 for a website design. He rents a desk in an office center, and has no employees, works from his cell phone, returns his calls you leave on voice mail while he is driving from traffic court to a real estate closing to a bankruptcy court meeting, the only 3 cases he has this week. “I will do your case for $800 come on in” he says. You say “don’t you want to know anything about me or what is involved before you tell me $800?” He says, “no, come on in, bring your money”

You show up and sure enough, it’s either a rented desk in “Armstrong Office Suites”, or it smells funny and not very professional. He is late. So you wait, he shows up and says “sorry, I was in Court” and brings you into his office. The place is a mess. He actually has a fax machine on his desk.

“Did you bring the $800?” he says. “Don’t you want to know anything about me or what is involved before you tell me $800?” you say for the 2nd time. (Oh, you also had to wait a week before he could “fit you in”.)

Anyway, he then tells you that instead of $800, because you have a house and car, he meant $800 to file, plus the court cost, and there will be additional costs if “anything goes wrong”.

You say, “whaaat? What do you mean, if anything goes wrong?” He says, “don’t worry, usually nothing usually wrong”! So much for the “UNKNOWN ATTORNEY”. But, if he gets your $800, he at least has his rent for the month.

At Geraci Law, we get a lot of people who have been elsewhere and are unhappy. Read our reviews. Some people focus on the attorney’s fee in choosing an attorney. My office gets calls from about a hundred people a year who have had Chapter 13 or Chapter 7 cases goofed up because they tried to save $100 on attorney fees.

Sometimes, in fact, regularly, we tell people NOT to file bankruptcy. That is why we have never “lost” a house or had any real “trouble”. So, one cost of a bankruptcy might be getting bad advice or bad representation by your attorney. The attorney’s fee doesn’t matter, since you can’t save much from one attorney to another.

So, bankruptcy is pretty cheap. If you had $20,000 to pay your creditors, you’d probably give it to them. If you could settle all your debt for $5000, you would. So why try to beat up your lawyer before you have all the facts in front of, by calling around to unknown lawyers to get them to tell you something on the phone? No smart lawyer will give you any real advice on the phone, much less quote you a firm fee for something they know nothing about.

Always get a free in office consultation. If you really want the cheapest lawyer in town, then go to the one who tells you $500 on the phone, and pray that you will be happy! You get what you pay for. At Geraci Law, we work with almost everyone, but $500 was a fee in 1975, not 40 years later in 2015. Every year, one of the “cheap” bankruptcy lawyers gets indicted or closes up, so watch out who you think is giving you a “cheap price”. The so-called “largest bankruptcy firm in the world”, “Macey & Aleman Legal Helpers” closed up suddenly in 2013 and did not refund fees to clients, who then filed claims in its bankruptcy for the $1400 or whatever fee they lost when the place shut its doors.

Read ALL ABOUT DEBT RELIEF at www.bankruptcybookbypeterfrancisgeraci.com

How to Dispute False Item on Your Credit Report

It’s not mine, get it off my credit report! How long does bankruptcy stay on?

Article written by Attorney Peter Francis Geraci – read more like this @ https://www.infotapes.com/Articles

You can get a free credit report from one of the 3 major credit bureaus. Go to www.freeannualcreditreport.com If you see a debt listed that is not yours, you can contest it by filling out the form on each credit bureau’s dispute site.

Equifax https://www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/credit-dispute/

Experian https://www.experian.com/disputes/main.html

Trans Union https://service.transunion.com/dss/login.page?dest=dispute

You can’t dispute things that are accurate. For instance, if you paid an account after it was late, the late account can show paid, but paid late. If you filed a bankruptcy, that fact that you filed stays on 10 years after your Chapter 7 filing date, and 7 years after your Chapter 13 filing date. If a debt that you received a bankruptcy discharge is listed, that is OK, as long as it shows that you owe nothing because of your bankruptcy discharge. Creditors know what a bankruptcy discharge means: you can’t file a Chapter 7 for another 8 years and have little or no debt except what you agreed to “reaffirm”, or survive discharge. So your credit score often goes up a lot after you get a bankruptcy discharge. Credit scores are bad because you have too much debt to pay, not because you got a discharge and now have no debt, and a fresh start, in most cases!

You can only contest things that are inaccurate. Here’s what Equifax says you can dispute:

• Personal information: Your name, addresses, Social Security number or date of birth.

• Account information you believe is inaccurate or incomplete: For example, if late payments are being reported on one of your accounts but you have always paid your balance on time and in full.

• Mixed credit files: If someone else’s information is being reported on your credit file. This may happen if a father and son (Sr. and Jr.) have the same name, for instance.

• Duplicate reporting of an item: One example might be a debt listed twice.

• Information that may indicate fraud or identity theft: These would be credit accounts, including collection accounts, on your credit report that you don’t recognize.

Whether you’re contacting a lender or the credit bureaus, provide all the evidence and documents you can to support your dispute, such as an account statement verifying an account balance. Give details about why you believe the information in the credit report is inaccurate or incomplete.

What should I expect after filing a dispute?

If you file a dispute with the three nationwide credit bureaus, you can generally expect to receive the results of your dispute within 30 days. If the information is found to be inaccurate, your credit reports will be updated, generally within about 30 days.

If the result of the investigation finds that the information is accurate, it will remain on your credit reports. If you still believe the information is inaccurate or incomplete, and you have additional information that can help support your dispute, you can file your dispute again with the credit bureau. You also have the option to provide a brief statement on your credit reports summarizing your dispute, which can help explain your situation. Or you could contact the creditor to attempt to resolve the issue.

Read ALL ABOUT DEBT RELIEF at www.bankruptcybookbypeterfrancisgeraci.com

Geraci Law Open in Royal Oak, Michigan

Geraci Law helping the entire state of Michigan – see Attorney Jason Kara and Rob Brynjelsen’s visit to Royal Oak!

Geraci Law is handling Chapter 7 bankruptcy cases across the entire state of Michigan! We have an office right in downtown Royal Oak. You can meet with Attorney Jason Kara or Attorney Rob Brynjelsen.

You can call us at 800 CALL PFG for a free phone consult, schedule online @ https://www.infotapes.com/Bankruptcy/OfficeLocator

Attorney Jason Kara

Attorney Rob Brynjelsen

Read ALL ABOUT DEBT RELIEF at www.bankruptcybookbypeterfrancisgeraci.com

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Attorney Frank Hernandez – 865 Reviews

Attorney Lizette Villegas – 811 Reviews

Attorney Wylie Mok – 1,367 Reviews

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CHAPTER #20 When Will Creditors Stop Bothering Me?

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Attorney Jason Kara

Attorney Rob Brynjelsen

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