Personal Bankruptcy Trustees at Sands & Associates are ready to help you find credit and debt relief. We offer a free consultation to determine how to get beyond your financial difficulties in Maple Ridge, explore your Maple Ridge debt relief options and determine if declaring bankruptcy in Maple Ridge is the best choice for you.
Managing large amounts of debt on a limited income can be a daunting task for even the most saavy household money managers. For many Canadians struggling in today’s economy it can seem downright impossible.
The Maple Ridge bankruptcy trustees at Sands & Associates can help. What many Canadians don’t realize is that a bankruptcy trustee can provide you with much more than just personal bankruptcy. Maple Ridge’s Sands & Associates has years of expertise providing those struggling with unmanageable balances with the debt relief they so desperately need and this relief comes in many forms.
For some individuals, some tweaks of the household budget are enough to free up some cash to put towards those bills. For others, credit counseling might be in order to better educate them on the use of credit. For still others, with large amounts of unsecured debt but steady income, a consumer proposal might be just the thing they need. There are always those individuals whose debt problems are so out of their control that a Maple Ridge personal bankruptcy is the only source of relief.
Your E. Sands and Associates trustee will provide you with a free initial consultation review you finances in detail and provide you with a recommendation based on his or her findings. Regardless of the option that you choose, your trustee will usher you through the process from beginning to end.
Debt Questions Answered with Blair Mantin, Bankruptcy Trustee:
Q: Does it cost money to file a bankruptcy ? What if I can't afford the fee?
A: Yes. So it does cost money to file bankruptcy. Now there are a few options out there. For most people bankruptcy costs far less than what they're already paying to service their debts. Bankruptcy's cost is all based upon low income standards so if you're earning above low income guidelines which are set by the federal government, you pay a specific portion of your income and you pay it for a period of time. If you're earning below low income guidelines, which are roughly two thousand dollars per month for a single person, their bankruptcy is fairly streamlined. It's as short as nine months and the minimum fees set by government are roughly eighteen hundred dollars. Now, if even that is unaffordable, there are some options out there. For most people if they're unable to afford bankruptcy fees, generally they have bigger challenges in their life that need to be solved first. So I would say, if they're unemployed and have no income going in, signing into bankruptcy is not going to fix that problem. Once they have some income coming in and they need to protect their wages, that's the right time to do the bankruptcy. So a lot of people are very worried that they can't pay their debts, and sometimes they just need to have a chat with a trustee and realize that there's actually nothing that their creditors can do to enforce their debts if the person doesn't have income and has very few or no assets, they could be judgment proof and they just wouldn't need to use the option of bankruptcy at that time.
Q: Would a consumer proposal be an option for me?
A: Well, depends on who you are and what your situation is. The best candidate for a consumer proposal is someone that's able to make some payments on their debt, so they do have a monthly income that they can count on but they're just not able to pay their debt in full. So they've made a good faith effort to really try to stay up on their bills but they're just finding it impossible. So what a consumer proposal allows them to do is to negotiate their debts down to an amount that they're able to satisfy each month and avoid the process of bankruptcy all together. In the first initial consultation with a trustee is when that would be able to be determined.
Q: Can a bankruptcy trustee help me with student debt?
A: Yes. Again a bankruptcy trustee is the only person that can deal with income tax and student loans. So no other person can help you with negotiating those debts. With student loans, there's a waiting period. So it has to be at least seven years from the last day you were a student before that debt could be dealt with in either a proposal or a bankruptcy. If it's been less than seven years, well the government feels that you need to make a very good faith effort to try to earn income in your given field and if you file for bankruptcy before seven years had lapsed, you would still owe that student loan at the end of the day.
Are you finally ready to stop struggling and seek the Maple Ridge debt relief you need? Contact a trustee at E. Sands & Associates to set up your free consultation and start the process of getting your finances back in order.
How to Contact Us:
In the course of our careers, we have worked with people in almost every personal circumstance. "We've seen it all. We are real people and we want to help you get relief from the stresses financial problems can cause.”
