Bob and I filed bankruptcy a few years ago, after we spent our retirement to keep our Restaurant/Bar afloat. That is an entirely different story, for another time. Today I wanted to tell you what happened when we hired an attorney.
Here we are broke and can barley afford to hire a lawyer or pay the court fee for filing. Because we are not "married" the California Bankruptcy Court requires that we file separate. Keep in mind that for the last 15 years all of our assets are in both names (checking, savings, mortgage,car, boat, etc.,). Because we have to file separate it means double the fee. This was bad enough, but since the court required that we file separate, our attorney had to open 2 different separate files on us and charge us like we were two separate people that walked into her office. So, not only did we pay double to the court to file, we paid double for the attorney for representation.
Equal Rights? I think not!
Tony
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Yes, you must pay two filing fees for you and your partner to file bankruptcy, that is because of the federal DOMA. But it seems to me that your attorney has a choice as to how she chooses to charge you for her services. She is not required to charge you individually. I realize this is coming a year after the post, but you may have found another attorney who would charge you according to the actual work performed and based on your situation, as opposed to blindly charging a flat fee based on how many cases she is opening.
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