I filled and received a discharge on my chapter 7 in June of 2010, my girlfriend (now wife) filed at the same time but was unable to complete due to her losing her job during the process. She has been out of work for the past year and I have been supporting our family. Due to this we were not able to continue to pay the car payments and the car was repossessed in February. We received notification this week that we are being sued by the car company for the balance after they sold the car. My wife will be refiling her chapter 7 very soon and we were wondering if she adds this soon to be judgement on her chapter 7 will I still be liable for the balance as it was a joint loan with me being the primary.
I am not licensed in NV so you should consult with a local attorney.
My thoughts: So I am assuming you and your wife had a car loan and held it jointly, defaulted and you filed for bankruptcy. Here is the problem, you reaffirmed the debt. So the bankruptcy will not help you (by reaffirming you kept the car loan outside of the bankruptcy, and it was not discharged as a debt). However, the car was repossessed, so the car company has the car. For this reason you should not be liable for the entire amount of the car, just a portion determined by the court. If this is a large amount you should get an attorney to challenge this. Your wife will be scott free and DO NOT LET HER REAFFIRM THE CAR LOAN!!
Hope this helps.
A reaffirmation agreement is a contract that is signed post petition so your dischage does not prevent a creditor from pursuing you if you default on the contract. The fact that your wife files bankruptcy and obtains a discharge will not affect your contractual agreement with the creditor so they have a right to pursue collection attempts against you.
If your Wife refiles her bankruptcy and discharges the debt, she will absolutely be off the hook for the car loan.
There has been some controversy in Nevada about whether a debt for a nonfiling spouse can be discharged. Most creditors I have seen, other than credit unions, are not willing to take the risk that they will be violating the bankruptcy discharge by pursuing the nonfiling spouse. Frankly, I think that by your Wife filing after you reaffirmed, you will confuse the heck out of them & they may go away.
But alas, my crystal ball is in the shop & I cannot offer any certainty to this supposition. Hope this perspective helps!
