Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Lawyers Blog: What is an automatic stay?

When your Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Lawyers file your Chapter 7 bankruptcy, your creditors (the businesses and people that you owe money to) are legally prohibited from trying to collect most kinds of debt from you.  As your Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Lawyers will inform you, this legal prohibition is called an Automatic Stay.

Creditors, collection agencies, attorneys, and so on are no longer able to contact (whether by phone, email, letter, etc.) you or your chapter 7 bankruptcy lawyers to try to collect money or property from you to pay the debts that your Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Lawyers plan to have discharged in your bankruptcy.  The stay is an injunction that stops lawsuits, foreclosures, garnishments, and all collection activity against you the moment your chapter 7 bankruptcy lawyers file your bankruptcy petition.  Again, this prohibition/injunction on contact and collection is called an automatic stay.

It is called an automatic stay because this happens automatically once your Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Lawyers file your chapter 7 bankruptcy.  Your Chapter 7 bankruptcy lawyers do not need to specifically request or petition for the stay from the Bankruptcy Court Judge.  The automatic stay gives you, the debtor, a break from some of the pressures that led to the debtor’s Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Lawyers filing for the chapter 7 bankruptcy.  The automatic stay also allows the bankruptcy trustee to decide which property you will be able to keep, which property you will have to surrender to your creditors, and how any money collected by the trustee from you will be divided among your creditors.

In some of our future posts we will discuss the specific types of debts that your creditors can not attempt to collect, and what debts that your creditors can continue to try to collect.

If you have any questions about filing for a chapter 7 bankruptcy, or about what an automatic stay can do you for you, please contact our chapter 7 bankruptcy lawyers for a free phone, email, or in-person consultation.  You can reach our chapter 7 bankruptcy lawyers by phone at (888) 820-5885, email at info@kregerthacker.com or by completing the red contact box on this page.