What Is Chapter 13 Bankruptcy?

Video Transcript

"Well, you're considering filing a bankruptcy and you've been told you need to file a Chapter Thirteen. What's a Chapter Thirteen Bankruptcy? My name is Andy Forman and I'm a Consumer and Business Bankruptcy lawyer in Tampa, Florida, and I represent individuals in Chapter Thirteen Bankruptcy. Chapter Thirteen Bankruptcy is a re-organizational bankruptcy for people with regular income. You could be self employed or you can work for others. Chapter Thirteen provides for a mechanism to repay your creditors over a period of time. Chapter Thirteen typically is used in a case where you have a house that you're delinquent on the mortgage or a car where you're delinquent a few car payments. The Chapter Thirteen plan, which is filed with the court, provides for a sixty-month cure of the missing car payments and the missing house payments, and it makes a distribution to your unsecured creditors based on the amount of disposable income that's determined to be in your household by something called "the means test." Chapter Thirteen is fairly complicated and I wouldn't advise doing it without the help of competent legal counsel. My name is Andy Forman. Good luck with your Chapter Thirteen Bankruptcy."