In a Chapter 7 case, you are asking the Bankruptcy Court to grant you a discharge of your debts without having to pay anything to your creditors. However, before you consider filing a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy, you must determine if any of your assets would be sold by the Bankruptcy Court to pay your creditors. When you file a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Petition, you provide the court with a list of all of the assets that you own and a description of the fair market value of each of these assets. If you fail to disclose to the court an asset that you own, the court can refuse to give you a discharge.
After you file your bankruptcy petition, all of your assets are controlled by the Bankruptcy Court. The court appoints a trustee to review the assets that you own. The trustee can ask the court for permission to sell an asset that you own to pay your creditors. However, the Bankruptcy Code allows you to protect the value of certain assets from the trustee. These types of protection are called “exemptions.” In many of the cases that William Buchanan handles, all of the assets of his clients are considered exempt and not available to the bankruptcy trustee to sell. These are called “no asset cases.” In a no asset case, the bankruptcy debtor receives a discharge of the debts that the debtor owes and retains all of the property that the debtor owns.