Bankruptcy credit counseling is required by the BAPCPA (Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act). Each individual debtor must take a bankruptcy credit counseling course at some time within 180 days prior to the filing of the bankruptcy petition. Additionally, the debtor is also required to take a debtor education course also referred to as a financial management course prior to discharge and usually within 45 days after the creditor’s meeting.
The bankruptcy credit counseling course is not a pass or fail test. Its not something that determines whether you qualify to file bankruptcy or not. Its just another hurdle that you have to jump through as a result of the Bankruptcy law changes enacted by congress in 2005. Usually it is done online and completed within 45 minutes. You are asked for your income and expenses, and a counselor at the end will advise you where you are spending too much and how you can reduce your expenses. The key fro a chapter 7 is that your expenses are more than your income.
In our office, we usually set our clients up for the service and after signup, they will receive an email from our office that include all instructions on how to begin and complete the course, along with their income and expense figures that they can use in completing the credit counseling course. Usually the client completes the credit counseling course within 45 minutes and are required to call in or chat at the end of the course to confirm they are the ones who completed the course.
There are many service providers that provide credit counseling courses, We use www.bkhelp.org because they have an automated system that we can use to track the progress of our clients and get a copy of the certificates both for the credit counseling course and the debtor education course sometimes referred to as financial management course. They also have good customer support to resole any technical issues that the client or our office on behalf of the client can contact them and resolve.
We are Los Angeles bankruptcy attorney and can help you with your bankruptcy needs should you require our services. Good luck and best regards.
