Keeping vs. Losing Your Home
In most situations:
You will be able to keep your home if you can afford to start repayment and make monthly payments.
You may lose your home if you cannot afford to continue making payments.
The first step is to determine whether you can protect all of your home equity when you file. Each chapter of bankruptcy allows you to protect your assets through a bankruptcy exemption. In South Carolina, a homestead exemption protects up to $60,975 in equity for real estate that you use as a residence. This amount is doubled ($121,590) for married couples.
What does this mean?
If you are filing Chapter 13 bankruptcy, you won’t be forced to give up any property as long as you can prove that you can pay for the nonexempt portion of the equity in your 3- to 5-year plan.
If you are filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy, and the exemption is not enough to cover the equity of your home, the court-appointed trustee will sell it off and use the money to pay your other debts.
The sooner you act, the better we can help you solve your problem.
