Expert: Los Angeles Bankruptcy Lawyer Leon D. Bayer - 12/11/2006

Question
We hired an attorney in March and was paid in full in April 1006.  This was when we were having financial hardships.  The attorney filed seven months later, I tried several times to get a hold of him to find out what was going on no return phone call.  On October 10, 2006 he filed without our knowledge at this point I did not want to file because we started to make income, not knowing anything about BK laws our attorney told us we should still file so we went to the first meeting on November 17, 2006 and the trustee asked us why we have no expenses (complete surprise and shock) I turned to the attorney and he oh I'am sorry I forgot to submit that my fault. The trustee appointed another date and request our bank statements for a full year (which if the attorney filed in April we had zero income for those prior 3 months Jan, Feb, March actually all the way through June)  If he filed when we were having the hardship its seem we would have been ok.  We provided the trustee with all the bank statements which show income approx. 59,000 and a 35,000 loan.  He stated at our next meeting of December 8 (our attorney was a no show), that we have alot of income and on October 10 when the attorney filed we had 8600.00 in our account.  This is true we are self employed and get draws but we still barley can make bills. The trustee says that we have to pay him that amount and that he will be collecting from our parents for money we borrowed from them in July after I initially thought our attorney filed in April.  We are very upset with attorney about not educated us on BK and getting us in situation where we might loose everything.  Can we dismiss our case somehow and fire him, so that we can deal with the creditors directly.  The trustee wants more bank statements for the next meeting of January 1, 2007.  Please Help  

Answer
What a disaster. I'm really sorry that you are going through this. Facing bankruptcy is tough enough on the soul, but no one needs bad lawyering added to all the other problems. It sounds to me like you should explore converting the case to Chapter 13, which takes the case away from the Chapter 7 trustee and may allow you to restructure your debts and pay what you can afford, based on your current income and living expenses. Of course, the first thing you need to do is find a new lawyer!

Where are you located? If you will send me an email I'll try to find you some referrals. You can reach me at bkcyattys@aol.com

You can also make a complaint about the lawyer to the state bar association, to the Office of the U.S. Trustee in your district, and you can write a complaint letter to the judge on our case and ask that the court institute discipline proceedings against your lawyer.