I'm writing this blog in the hopes that this will help other people in the future. I have to give you a brief background in order for all to understand how this situation developed into the disaster it has become. In the beginning of 2000 I was diagnosed with degenerative disc disease. What was so devastating about this is it directly affected my career. I was a supervisor in charge of the day shift crew at a local Newspaper as a printer. I suddenly found myself in the land of uncertainty, financial challenges were inevitable. My wife and I didn't know what to do about our long term financial goals. I had disability insurance which only pays a percentage of your annual gross income. We knew that the amount I would receive would not be enough.

                        We live in a rural area where farmland is abundant. Besides a little gas station, bank and a local hair salon there's not much of a town. There was however a little local business for sale and the owner was willing to owner finance the loan. After some negotiations we were the proud owners of a local business, a liquor store. The first full day of business that was about a week before Christmas we were robbed at gunpoint. The days profits gone!. I still had the fire in my belly to make this work but after 15 months we were bankrupt. The main cause not enough operating capital in the beginning. The main reason to buy this business was fear of being financially ruined, that we weren't dependent on the small income I was getting from the disability insurance. Big mistake!. My back continued to get worse my wife assumed all the responsibilities of running the day to day operations of the store. We had to hire help and when business got slow during the winter we were taking part of my check to pay the bills. In 2002 we had to turn the business back over to the person we were buying it from.

                      Now we were deeper in debt than we could have ever imagined. After we weighed all of our options we had no choice but to file a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy. We talked to a few attorneys to see which one would be sensitive to our situation and take the time to make sure we got through this with the least amount of loss as possible. Our request was simple. We wanted to keep our house and our car. The attorney told us that he would be able to do that. We did however question his fee which was several hundred dollars more than the other attorneys we spoke to. He convinced us that his fee was more because we were paying for experience, that he would make sure that everything was done and done right. He also told us that we could go to one of the other bankruptcy attorneys that charged less, but to not be surprised if something went wrong and we lost our home and other belongings. We accepted his fee agreement. During the bankruptcy process you have something called Meeting of Creditors. The point of this meeting is to allow the creditor a chance to challenge whether a debt should or should not be discharged. We sat down with the trustee and discussed our debts, we also discussed our home and was asked to make the trustee believe that we could keep the mortgage up on our home. This entire proceeding was recorded and after the trustee was finished with the interview he stated that our intentions was to keep our home and he recommended that we kept it. Once the meeting was over we talked to our attorney about what had just happened. The only thing I wanted to know was were we going to be able to keep our home and our car. His reply was yes, everything was fine and to go home, relax and have a good life. A few months later we received our Discharge of Debts and the Final Decree. In the final decree the trustee releases your estate back to you if there is no disbursement of funds. This is where they sell off your property and belongings to pay back creditors. None of that happened to us, we received our entire estate back, or so we thought.

                       We went on with our lives which has been really hard. My health problems continued to worsen. I became disabled completely which entitled me to Social Security disability. Things have been tough financially. Just as we thought we were leveling out my wife had a severe heart attack. She had to get Triple bypass surgery done with no health insurance. Final bill $65,000.00. We talked to every organization we could think of to get help but didn't qualify for one reason or another. Mostly because she wasn't permanently disabled and is still young enough to work. We finally got some help through the hospital collections. This gentleman helped my wife through the maze of paperwork and medical records to apply for assistance from the State's Medical Assistance program. Almost a year later she was approved to have everything paid except $2,000.00. We rejoiced for paying back that amount was a far cry better than 65k. You have to call each person you owe and give them this account number like a credit card number for the doctors to get paid. Now these people harassed us for over a year, phone calls and letters threatening to sue us and go after our bank account. Now my wife gives them the means to get every red nickel they threatened us for and all they had to do is call a toll free number and enter the number they were given and they get paid. They couldn't do that right and as a result we now still owe 10k because the doctors accounting departments didn't take action to get paid within the specified time frame allowed. Guess what it's our fault because we didn't follow up to make sure they got paid.

                        Once we found out this information we were upset. We decided that we needed to refinance our home since it had now been 4 years since the bankruptcy. We figured that our credit was not the greatest but the time lapsed since the bankruptcy and making our mortgage payments on time that owning our house for almost 10 years that we would have a good shot at a decent interest rate and take some cash out to pay these medical bills off. We found a bank to work with us. The loan officer was very helpful in side stepping a couple land mines. One she couldn't side step was I didn't have a credit score which she felt was odd because of making mortgage I should have some kind of score even with the bankruptcy on my credit. The loan officer called our mortgage company to find out why they haven't been reporting to the credit agencies only to find out that during the bankruptcy our attorney didn't reaffirm our debt on the house. Then after further investigation the bankruptcy department at the mortgage company told us that the house went into the bankruptcy. We were horrified! That's got to be wrong. We called the trustees office and asked the clerk if the paperwork necessary to keep our home was filed correctly. She claimed that our attorney filed our case as a no asset bankruptcy which means our house was filed under the bankruptcy. We now have filed a complaint with the attorney grievance committee. We pray at this point that the attorney will be held negligent and find some course to tear our house and our lives out of the clutches of the system that helped put us here.

                       So here's a case for life's unfortunate mistakes. I don't claim to be the smartest person in the world, but maybe too trusting. We as a society entrust other people to assist us through life's toughest problems. We pour out our lives,  give up our last nickel so that we feel safe and put a expert between you and the problem only to find out that you got screwed over. It's been 4 years since the bankruptcy, we are still living in our home and according to the courts it was my attorney's responsibility to tell us that our home was lost. He didn't. I was taught growing up that you have to claim half responsibility for your problems. I claimed mine when we filed the bankruptcy and imprisoned us to 10 years worth of bad credit. I hope people read this see that even when you try to do things right you still pay, sometimes with the very thing your trying to protect. In our case our home. Who pays now?