My husband and I may be filing for Chapter 13. We only wanted to file on our mortgage but were told it has to also include

The short answer is no. There are multiple reasons that you must do this. Some of those reasons are: 1) The bankruptcy code requires full disclosure of your financial situation under oath. That includes listing all creditors. 2) In a bankruptcy case all creditors in the same class must be treated be paid in the same manner from the bankruptcy estate, and in a chapter 13 case, the bankruptcy estate includes your future monthly income that is used to pay family expenses. 3) In a chapter 13, the bankruptcy code requires that your husband obtain permission from the chapter 13 trustee to incur new debt while in the bankruptcy case, which includes continuing to charge on the credit card or cards. There is another factor to consider in both chapter 7 and chapter 13 cases. Most national lenders like the major credit card banks and companies like Sears or gasoline credit cards receive a download from one of the credit bureaus once a week with all the bankruptcy filings in the previous week. Thus, many credit card banks or companies cancel credit cards a short period of time after the bankruptcy filing even if the debtor owed no money on the credit card and the card was not listed. If you are a co-debtor on the card or cards that you do not want to list, you may be able to pay the cards in full from your income and show that the money you are paying to pay your debt outside the plan is not included in your disposable income on the Form 22C-1 (Statement of Your Current Monthly Income and Calculation of Commitment Period.) The credit card still may be canceled, but if you pay the card payments timely, the filing of the bankruptcy should not be shown on your bankruptcy. We have filed suit under the Fair Credit Reporting Act the few times that the reporting of the bankruptcy on a co-debtor's credit report was not deleted after we notified the credit bureau that any reporting of the bankruptcy information should be taken off the report. This issue has not come up often because most lenders understand that the reporting of any negative post petition information cannot be reported as long as the debt is being paid in full through the plan by the debtor or outside of the plan by the co-debtor. Finally, How the above issues are handled related to this may vary, depending upon rulings of your bankruptcy judge and the circuit court of appeals in your jurisdiction. Your attorney appears to be giving you the correct advice. If you have questions, just let him know what your concerns are and ask.

You cannot pick and choose amongst creditors. You need to devote your best efforts to reorganizing under the protection of the bankruptcy courts, and racking up more credit card while you are paying off debts will not advance your goal.

When you file bankruptcy, all creditors must be treated equally or in accordance with the laws relating to debt allowance. The debtor does not get to pick and choose which creditor he favors and which creditor he does not. Such a rule would create unpredictable havoc in the court system. The Bankruptcy Code seeks to be fair to all parties. In this nation, laws are the ultimate authority - not individuals. Besides to exclude creditors would gross affect your ability to pay a chapter 13, which you would not want anyway. If you were allowed to exclude creditors, that would encourage creditors to attempt to bribe debtors to exclude them. The excluded creditors would then be rewarded and the honest creditors punished. For whatever reasons there are, this is the present law regarding listing creditors. The official bankruptcy forms contain an oath that the schedules are complete. If you sign that and do not list all creditors, you would be committing perjury. Please be careful to list every single creditor, including debts to friends and relatives, as well as any other kind of debt. I tell clients this: If someone of some organization or company expects you to pay them, list it.

No. You must file on all existing debt. The bankruptcy code requires full disclosure of your financial situation and it requires that all creditors be listed on the bankruptcy schedules. This is because, as my colleague noted, all creditors must be treated equally when you file bankruptcy.

Chapter 13 is a mechanism to treat all your creditors fairly. You cannot say "I will screw that one over, but I like the others and will pay them before the secured one". The trustee will allocate your payments to all creditors in a fair manner.