Working With a Bankruptcy Attorney

The word bankruptcy comes from the composite Latin words bancus and ruptus, literally meaning a broken (ruptus) bench (bancus). In ancient Roman times, bankers put up benches in the market place from where they would extend loans and carry out financial transactions. If a banker became insolvent, his bench was shattered as a sign that he could no longer secure debts. There was a diversity of ancient approaches to bankruptcy. Both Ancient Israel and Greece had systems of insolvency and debt forgiveness, forgiveness following 5 years in Greece and 7 years in Israel. In the intermediary, creditors might need to sell themselves as slaves to pay the debt. In actuality there were exceptions to the rules in both countries, and being a debt slave was not so pleasant, even if he was more than just an ordinary slaves. In some other countries, the treatment of debtors was much crueler. In the code book of Gengus Khan, a man who sank into debt three times was executed. From Russia come stories of Cossaks who would injure and on occasion kill peasants who were unable to pay their debts. Today, modern civilization offers an substitute to historical bankruptcy. People who have gone into debt have the chance to undergo debt restructuring, bankruptcy education to help debtors rearrange their debts and continue their financial life. In the United States, the power to carry out laws of bankruptcy is taken from Article 1, Section 8, Clause 4, and the Bankruptcy Code, is located at Title 11 of the United States Code. Much of the focus of American debt law is 1) to enable debtors to recover as much as possible and 2) to reeducate the debtor so that he won't go into debt again after he emerges from bankruptcy. The education process in bankruptcy is at least three fold. The first part of the retraining comes from the debtors interaction with the bankruptcy lawyer. A bankrupcty attorney spends his entire legal career in the courts and tries cases before Judges who interpret and in many cases create current thought about bankruptcy. During the first meetings with the client, the bankruptcy lawyer will help the client to describe the financial mess he has gotten into, in an orderly fashion. His morass of debts will be transposed into a detailed story of assets,debts, including liens on property and back taxes, current monthly income, and expenses. The client will be asked to summarize how he came to be in debt. If the debtor wishes to continue with the process, he must take a bankruptcy counseling course taught by licensed professionals. During this course he will be taught techniques of debt management, and he will decide if he is capable of getting himself out of debt with the help of these options, and thus avoid bankruptcy, or if he feels the need to proceed with bankruptcy . If he decides to proceed with bankruptcy, he will have to take a course on bankrupcty management. This course will provide him the information he must have to proceed with the bankruptcy and to remain debt free as soon as he returns from bankruptcy. During the time of the procedure, the bankruptcy lawyer, the courts, the debtor, and the creditor will communicate in and out of court, and in keeping with the bankruptcy laws, the debts will be reorganized and settled as best they can, and a certain percentage will be forgiven. When the debtor comes out of bankruptcy, he will be allowed to continue his business, with whatever credit restrictions the court concludes are appropriate.