Apparently, the Best Bankruptcy Lawyer in Phoenix, Arizona Doesn't Work at that Pre-Paid Legal Services Firm

So there I sat, like you do when you're a bankruptcy lawyer in Phoenix, Arizona, and this nice couple sat down.

I said, "So how can I fix all your problems?" Because I always want to fix all their problems. And sometimes I can.

She said, we were a little uncomfortable with the advice we got before, so we thought we'd shop bankruptcy lawyers. I said that I was happy that I was on her shopping list.

I also asked what advice made her uncomfortable.

She said that the last bankruptcy lawyer she'd talked to hadn't been board-certified.

I said, no biggie. There are several very good lawyers in the area who are not board-certified in bankruptcy law, and I was still happy to refer them cases appropriate to their skills.

She said she had $20,000 worth of non-exempt real property, and his advice had been "Sell the non-exempt piece of real property to your daughter for $1,000, then wait for six months and file your Chapter 7 Bankruptcy."

I said that was a remarkably, incredibly, seriously bad piece of advice for everybody in sight. Your daughter would get in trouble. You'd get in trouble. You might actually go to jail. At a very minimum it would have been a fraudulent transfer, just as though you had sold a car to your daughter for a dollar prior to filing.

And I also pointed out that I was mystified by the suggestion that waiting to file for six months would somehow help. There are two relevant fraudulent transfer statutes that jumped out of my head when I heard the story, and one has a one-year reach back, and one has a four-year reach back.

So no matter what the nice couple decides to do, at least they aren't going to be committing bankruptcy fraud on my watch, because they're waay too nice for orange jumpsuits.

And I still need to find out what pre-paid plan that was, and what amazingly bad Arizona bankruptcy lawyer that was, so I never refer a client to him by mistake.