Hey, Give Heidi a Break, Okay? Itemize your Furniture!

Here's the deal: when you fill out your forms online in our computerized system, there will come a point when you are finished, and you will hit "send".

If you don't itemize your furniture (yes, I'm not kidding; here in Arizona, furniture is exempt up to a replacement value of $4,000 for a single, and $8,000 for a couple, BUT YOU HAVE TO ITEMIZE IT! REALLY!!).

When I say itemize, I mean you need to list your furniture on our form as single items so the trustee can tell if they add up to the exempt amount, and if all the pieces of furniture fit into the exemptions, kinda like:

couch, 8 years old, $40
dining room table, 12 years old, $30
brown chest of drawers, $10
black chest of drawers, $15

AND SO ON, INCLUDING ALL YOUR STUFF!

If you hit "send" before you're really finished with your schedules, your filing will be delayed while Heidi, the Bankruptcy Angel, is wasting her time typing in (the old fashioned way) what you didn't type in when you were filling out your online forms.

This makes her sad, and that makes me sad.

It makes you sad as well, because it will delay your filing date, because we will serve no bankruptcy before its time (reference to old Gallo Wine commercial; old guy reference).

So help us help you, and fill out your online forms completely; you'll wind up doing twice as much work, overall, if you lump your furniture together and then have to itemize it and send it by email to Heidi and we have to do stuff mechanically.

THE GOOD NEWS: you don't need to itemize your clothes. The exemption for clothing in Arizona is $500, and unless you're Cher, your used clothes aren't worth that much, because they're....used clothes! Go online and see how much replacement value for used clothes is, and you'll understand why we don't itemize clothing in Arizona.

The other news: itemize all your stock, your airline tickets, your real property (that means houses and land) and everything else you have, because it's a real live crime to fail to list your stuff. If you have a used matchbook collection composed of three matchbooks from a bar, a hotel, and another bar, you probably don't need to list those. Probably.

Also note: a lot of people would like to lump items like "exercise equipment" together.

No.

If you do that, neither we nor the trustee know what you have. You may have a jumprope. You may have a $73,345.12 Olympic lifting setup, including a wall of hand weights.

If you're trying to hide stuff by failing to itemize, you might slide stuff past me and Heidi; you won't slide it past the trustee, who will have gone through your check registers and credit card stuff to find out what you have purchased these last many years.

And if you have a firearm or firearms, you have to tell us and the trustee what it is, really.

Gun could mean a black powder rifle worth $72.00;

Gun could mean a World War II relic, rare, in museum quality, worth $17,000;

Gun could mean a .32 pocket pistol so rusted it won't function again, worth $0.

Gun could mean an AR-15 worth (in today's market) $1,752, given the add-ons.

Gun could mean a WWII bazooka, although that would surprise even me.

So make your life easier and let us know ahead of time what you own, with replacement value, so we can figure out if it's exempt or or if it exceeds the exemption values, based on replacement values.

Note: eBay is invaluable for determining the actual replacement value of assets, so use it when you're estimating replacement values for your personal property. Use Zillow for your house. Use blue book for your car (the highest value you can find. We'll talk about it).

Note also: you'll be amazed at the actual replacement value of stuff now, during a depression.

If you play hide the pea from us, you'll have a bad day with the trustee.

I promise.

p.s. Once you DO hit "send", your data goes to Heidi. Figure that there are at least five schedules ahead of you in line that she's working on before she gets to look at yours, so a week before she's ready to get it to me for review.

And ditto me; I'm booked to the gills at all times during this depression, so figure a week for my review. Then a week for your spend-down, so you have food after you file.

Then WE hit send and you get filed with the Court. AS LONG AS YOU PASSED THE MEANS TEST; WHICH WE WON'T KNOW FOR SURE UNTIL YOU HIT SEND AND WE GET TO CRUNCH THE NUMBERS FOR YOU.

SO DON'T WAIT UNTIL THE DAY BEFORE YOUR TRUSTEE'S SALE, OR THE DEFAULT JUDGMENT, TO HIT SEND. GIVE US A BREAK, AND MAKE IT EASIER FOR US TO HELP YOU, OKAY?

Because, for real, I really really want to get the best result I can for every single person I take on as a client under this crazy, backwards post-2005 Bankruptcy law.

Now, when you read through the above, you may wonder why I seem a little emphatic. That's simply because I've had clients who hired me, took nine months to finish the online forms, and then started screaming like banshees that they weren't instantly filed with the Court.

I wonder; didn't they understand that when they hired a lawyer, the lawyer was going to need to, you know, actually review the schedules before they went in?

And, of course, they didn't pass the means test on the day they pressed send, and didn't want to talk about ways to get their problem solved.

I finally fixed 'em, but now my hair is much, much whiter. And I still like 'em just fine, but I wish they had made it easier to help them.