One of the requirements for filing a petition for bankruptcy is the attendance at a pre-bankruptcy counseling session. To prove to the court you have attended this session, the counselor provides the debtor with a special certificate. This is known as the Pre-Bankruptcy Counseling Certificate and it must be submitted to the court with the initial petition for bankruptcy.
While that sounds simple, the process itself is not. To begin with, you cannot attend just any credit counselor. You must attend a session that is run by a not-for-profit counseling organization. That organization must be approved by the bankruptcy court in the district in which you intend to file for bankruptcy. Your local bankruptcy court is the best place to look for a counseling organization that meets those requirements.
If filing a joint petition for bankruptcy, you must both attend counseling and you must each receive a certificate. If you are in the process of marriage separation, you can attend counseling sessions separately.
The counseling session itself must be for a minimum of sixty minutes (between 60 and 90 minutes is the norm) where you will be required to discuss your current financial situation. The session is designed to investigate possible alternatives to bankruptcy. However, at the end of the day you can choose to ignore any of the advice from the counseling session and file for bankruptcy anyway.
Once you have completed this counseling session, the counselor will issue you a certificate that includes the counseling organization’s name, your name, and the date you attended the counseling session. This certificate must then be included with all the paperwork that is submitted to the court when filing for bankruptcy. Failing to include a certificate will result in your petition being dismissed and you will have to file again, possibly after waiting for up to 180 days. The only exception to this is when filing an emergency bankruptcy petition – in that case, you have seven days to complete the counseling and to hand the certificate into the court.
Counseling can be undertaken face to face, over the telephone, or over the Internet. What is important is that the counselor is on the official list of approved counselors for your region.
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