When any bankruptcy petition is filed, a powerful federal law immediately cloaks the debtor with protection from creditors. The protection is a federal injunction known as the automatic stay. The automatic stay is a stay of all collection actions against the debtor including, but not limited to, phone calls, dunning by letter or any other communication, collection lawsuits, foreclosures, repossessions, and other types of litigation. In other words, the stay prohibits any creditor from taking any action to collect a debt.

The minute your petition is filed, the law requires that debt collectors stop calling you. It could take a few days for creditors to receive notice of the filing which is mailed by the bankruptcy court.

If a creditor or creditor’s representative calls you after the bankruptcy petition is filed, you need to tell him that you filed for bankruptcy relief and give him the bankruptcy court case number and location.

Once clients retain our law firm, we direct them to tell their creditors they have retained our law firm.  Clients should give the creditors our telephone number. After that information is provided, the creditors are not permitted by law to contact the debtor again, unless the attorney/client arrangement dissolves, or if the debtor does not file for bankruptcy relief within a few months. If a creditor continues to contact the debtor, after the creditor learns that an attorney has been involved, the creditor violates the federal Fair Debt Collections Practices Act.  Consequently, the debtor has remedies against the creditor.

Once creditors know that their customer has retained counsel, they do not continue to call. Thus, once you retain our law firm, you will receive certain important and valuable protections immediately.