As I spend my days talking to debtors, I ask myself the question: are there any non-bankruptcy-lawyer alternatives to bankruptcy that actually work well? As an Arizona bankruptcy attorney, I'd love to have a place to send people for whom bankruptcy is not a good fit. Or to send people who just can't bring themselves to file a Chapter 7 bankruptcy even though it would fix all their economic problems.
Here's what I mean: they come in and sit down, and explain that they've been paying x dollars a month to y company, and their credit rating keeps getting lower, and the balance on each credit card account keeps getting higher, and they don't know what good sending the money each month may be.
And, of course, there's the fact that they got sued by creditor z last week, and they had thought that that was being taken care of by company y.
So let me know, please.
Has anybody had positive experiences with debt consolidation or debt negotiation or debt reduction companies of any sorts? If so, what? And which companies?
I'm not talking about lawyers making phone calls to negotiate a $5,000,000 dollar fraud judgment down to $5,000.
I'm talking about a couple who have ten credit cards who are sending $500 per month to some company or another that promised to dramatically reduce their credit card debts and keep them from being sued for nonpayment.
Has anybody out there had any luck with any of those?
Because, obviously, the people who visit with me (I'm an Arizona bankruptcy lawyer) have not.
Had any luck.
