CHAPTER 6: COMPLETE AND FILE YOUR BANKRUPTCY PAPERWORK 141
help from an attorney to get a hearing on your case.
Box five is for people filing in districts that the u.s.
trustee has exempted from the counseling requirement because approved services aren’t available; we know of no such districts as of january 2007.
Information Regarding the Debtor. Most filers will check the top box. Check the middle box if it is appropriate (it won’t be for most users of this book, which is intended for individuals and sole proprietors).
leave the bottom box blank. if it applies to you, see a lawyer.
Statement by a Debtor Who Resides as a Tenant of Residential Property. as explained in Ch. 2, certain evictions are allowed to proceed after you file for bankruptcy, despite the automatic stay. the questions in this section are intended to figure out whether your landlord has already gotten a judgment for possession (eviction order), and whether you might be able to postpone the eviction. see Ch. 2 for the information you need to complete these boxes, if they apply.
Third Page
Signature(s) of Debtor(s) (Individual/Joint). you—and your spouse, if you are filing jointly—must sign where indicated. if you are filing alone, type “n/a” on the joint debtor signature line. include your telephone number and the date. you—and your spouse, if you are filing jointly—declare that you are aware that you may file under other sections of the bankruptcy code, and that you still choose to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
(these provisions are described in Ch. 1.) if you think you want to pursue one of those options, put your Chapter 7 petition aside and either consult a lawyer or find a book that explains your proposed alternative in more detail. For example, check out Chapter 13 Bankruptcy: Repay Your Debts, by stephen elias and robin leonard (nolo).
Signature of Attorney. if you are representing yourself, type “debtor not represented by attorney” in the space for the attorney’s signature. if you are represented by a lawyer, fill in the blanks accordingly.
Signature of Non-Attorney Petition Preparer. if a bankruptcy petition preparer typed your forms, have that person complete this section. otherwise, type
“n/a” on the first line.
Form 6—Schedules
Form 6 refers to a series of schedules that provides the trustee and court with a picture of your current financial situation. Most of the information needed for these schedules is included in the Personal Property Checklist, Property exemption worksheet, and homeowners’ worksheet that you (hopefully) completed in Chs. 3 and 4.
Use the correct address for your creditors. Many of these schedules ask you to provide addresses for the creditors you list. For creditors who have dunned you with written requests or demands for payment, you should provide the address that the creditor listed as a contact address on at least two written communications you received from the creditor within the 90-day period prior to your anticipated filing date. If the creditor has not contacted you within that 90-day period, provide the contact address that the creditor gave in the last two communications it sent to you. If you no longer have the address of your original creditor, use the contact address of the most recent creditors. If a creditor is a minor child, simply put “minor child” and the appropriate address.
Don’t list the child’s name.
CHAPTER 6: COMPLETE AND FILE YOUR BANKRUPTCY PAPERWORK 143
Case No. if you made an emergency filing, fill in the case number assigned by the court. otherwise, leave this blank.
If you don’t own real estate, type “N/A” anywhere in the first column, type “0” in the total box at the bottom of the page, and move on to Schedule B.
Real Property Defined
Real property—land and things permanently attached to land—includes more than just a house. It can also include unimproved land, vacation cabins, condominiums, duplexes, rental property, business property, mobile home park spaces, agricultural land, airplane hangars, and any other buildings permanently attached to land.
You may own real estate even if you can’t walk on it, live on it, or get income from it. This might be true, for example, if:
• you own real estate solely because you are married to a spouse who owns real estate and you live in a community property state, or
• someone else lives on property that you are entitled to receive in the future under a trust agreement.
There’s a separate schedule for leases and timeshares. If you hold a timeshare lease in a vacation cabin or property, lease a boat dock, lease underground portions of real estate for mineral or oil exploration, or otherwise lease or rent real estate of any description, don’t list it on Schedule A. All leases and timeshares should be listed on Schedule G. (See the instructions for that schedule below.)
Description and Location of Property. For each piece of real property you own, list the type of property—for example, house, farm, or undeveloped lot—and street address. you don’t need to include the legal description of the property (the description on the deed).
Nature of Debtor’s Interest in Property. in this column, you need to provide the legal definition for the interest you (or you and your spouse) have in the real estate. the most common type of interest—outright ownership—is called “fee simple.” even if you still
owe money on your mortgage, as long as you have the right to sell the house, leave it to your heirs, and make alterations, your ownership is fee simple. a fee simple interest may be owned by one person or by several people jointly. normally, when people are listed on a deed as the owners—even if they own the property as joint tenants, tenants in common, or tenants by the entirety—the ownership interest is in fee simple. other types of real property interests include:
• Life estate. this is the right to possess and use property only during your lifetime. you can’t sell the property, give it away, or leave it to someone when you die. instead, when you die, the property passes to whomever was named in the instrument (trust, deed, or will) that created your life estate. this type of ownership is usually created when the sole owner of a piece of real estate wants his surviving spouse to live on the property for the rest of her life, but then have the property pass to his children. in this situation, the surviving spouse has a life estate. surviving spouses who are beneficiaries of a-B, spousal, or marital bypass trusts have life estates.
• Future interest. this is your right to own property sometime in the future. a common future interest is owned by a person who—under the terms of a deed or irrevocable trust—will inherit the property when its current possessor dies. note that the fact that you are named in a will or living trust doesn’t create a future interest, because the person who signed the deed or trust could amend the document to cut you out.
• Contingent interest. this ownership interest doesn’t come into existence unless one or more conditions are fulfilled. wills sometimes leave property to people under certain conditions. if the conditions aren’t met, the property passes to someone else. For instance, emma’s will leaves her house to john provided that he takes care of her until her death. if john doesn’t care for emma, the house passes to emma’s daughter jane.
Both john and jane have contingent interests in emma’s home.
• Lienholder. if you are the holder of a mortgage, deed of trust, judgment lien, or mechanic’s lien on real estate, you have an ownership interest in the real estate.
ownership share in this column. For example, if you and your brother own a home as joint tenants (each owns 50%), split the property’s current market value in half and list that amount here.
if your interest is intangible—for example, you are a beneficiary of real estate held in trust that won’t be distributed for many years—enter an estimate provided by a real estate appraiser or put “don’t know” and explain why you can’t be more precise.
Total. add the amounts in the fourth column and enter the total in the box at the bottom of the page.
the form reminds you that you should also enter this total on the summary of schedules (see the instructions for completing the summary, below).
Amount of Secured Claim. list mortgages and other debts secured by the property. if there is no secured claim of any type on the real estate, enter “none.”
if there is, enter separately the amount of each
outstanding mortgage, deed of trust, home equity loan, or lien (judgment lien, mechanic’s lien, materialmen’s lien, tax lien, or the like) that is claimed against the property. if you don’t know the balance on your mortgage, deed of trust, or home equity loan, call the lender. to find out the existence and values of liens, visit the land records office in your county and look up the parcel in the records; the clerk can show you how. or, you can order a title search through a real estate attorney or title insurance company. if you own several pieces of real estate and there is one lien on file against all the real estate, list the full amount of the lien for each separate property item. don’t worry if, taken together, the value of the liens is higher than the value of the property; it’s quite common.
how you itemize liens in this schedule won’t affect how your property or the liens will be treated in bankruptcy. the idea here is to notify the trustee of all possible liens that may affect your equity in your real estate.
if you are simply unable to obtain this information, and you can’t afford the help of a lawyer or title insurance company, put “unknown.” this will be okay for the purpose of filing your papers, but you may need to get the information later. For example, a question might come up as to whether the equity in your home is protected by your exemption. suppose your exemption is $10,000 and your equity is $30,000.
you would probably lose the house and get $10,000,
• Easement holder. if you are the holder of a right to travel on or otherwise use property owned by someone else, you have an easement.
• Power of appointment. if you have a legal right, given to you in a will or transfer of property, to sell a specified piece of someone’s property, that’s called a power of appointment and should be listed.
• Beneficial ownership under a real estate contract.
this is the right to own property by virtue of having signed a binding real estate contract. even though the buyer doesn’t yet own the property, the buyer does have a “beneficial interest”—that is, the right to own the property once the formalities are completed. For example, property buyers have a beneficial ownership interest in property while the escrow is pending.
if you have trouble figuring out which of these definitions best fits your type of ownership interest, leave the column blank and let the trustee help you sort it out.
Husband, Wife, Joint, or Community. if you’re not married, put “n/a.” if you are married, indicate whether the real estate is owned:
• by the husband (h)
• by the wife (w)
• jointly by husband and wife as joint tenants, tenants in common, or tenants by the entirety (j), or
• jointly by husband and wife as community property (C).
For more information on ownership of property by married couples, see Ch. 3.
Current Value of Debtor’s Interest in Property, without Deducting any Secured Claim or Exemption. enter the current fair market value of your real estate ownership interest. if you filled in the homeowners’ worksheet in Ch. 4, use the value you came up with there.
don’t figure in homestead exemptions or any mortgages or other liens on the property. just put the actual current market value as best you can calculate it. however, you can deduct the costs of sale from the market value and enter the difference, as long as you explain what you did on the schedule. (see Ch. 4 for information on valuing real estate.)
if you own the property with someone else who is not joining you in your bankruptcy, list only your
CHAPTER 6: COMPLETE AND FILE YOUR BANKRUPTCY PAPERWORK 145
and your creditors would get $20,000, less the costs of sale. But if there were an unknown lien on the property for $20,000, then you wouldn’t have to lose the house, because there would be nothing left over for the unsecured creditors. so it’s to your benefit to get this information any way you can.