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Usually not. Certain property is exempt and may not be taken by creditors unless it is encumbered by a valid mortgage or lien. A person is usually allowed to retain his or her unencumbered exempt property in a chapter 7 case. A person may also be allowed to retain certain encumbered exempt property). Encumbered property is property against which a creditor has a valid lien, mortgage or other security interest.

Rarely. There is a meeting at an office called the "meeting of creditors," which is usually held about a month after the case is filed. You will be represented by me. The person filing the case must bring photo identification, his or her social security card, his or her most recent pay stub and all of his or her bank and investment account statements to this hearing. At this meeting the person is put under oath and questioned about his or her debts, assets, income and expenses by the hearing officer or trustee. In most chapter 7 consumer cases no creditors appear; but any creditor that does appear is usually allowed to question the person. For most persons this will be their only appearance, but if the bankruptcy court decides not to grant the person a discharge or if the person wishes to reaffirm a debt, there may be a hearing about three months later in bankruptcy court which the person will have to attend. This usually does not happen in a typical case.

No. If there is a reasonable basis for doing so, unsecured debts (or claims) may be divided into separate classes and treated differently. It may be possible, therefore, to pay certain unsecured debts in full, while paying significantly less on others.

A chapter 13 case is filed in the office of the clerk of the bankruptcy court in the district where the debtor has lived or maintained a principal place of business for the greatest portion of the last 180 days. The bankruptcy court is a federal court and is a unit of the United States district court.

The court will approve and confirm a chapter 13 plan if it finds that: (1) all required fees, charges and deposits have been paid, (2) all priority claims will be paid in full under the plan, (3) if the plan creates different classes of claims, it provides the same treatment for each claim within a particular class, (4) the plan was proposed in good faith, (5) each unsecured creditor will receive under the plan at least as much as it would have received had the debtor filed a chapter 7 case, (6) the debtor will be able to make the required payments and comply with the plan, and (7) each secured creditor is dealt with in one of the four methods described in the answer above.