This is the good part.
Right after you file your Chapter 7 in Arizona, you'll hear something you haven't heard for some time.
Silence.
Creditors you've listed on your schedules (and you are required to list all your creditors, remember, including creditors you don't really want to list!) now know that they can't call you.
And they stop.
Process servers won't be waiting in the bushes outside your house to serve you with lawsuits, because they also understand the provisions of the automatic stay, which is a major debtor and estate protection that originates from 11 USC 362. A trustee's sale or mortgage foreclosure on your house will be stopped in it's tracks for 30 or 60 days, until the secured creditor can get the stay lifted to continue the trustee's sale.
Even Big Lou the repo guy puts away his hook when he sees the notice from the Bankruptcy Court.
Mind you, the creditors only sleep, they don't disappear; but collection activities of most kinds (not all kinds; go back and read the exceptions to the automatic stay) now stop until the creditor goes to ask "mother may I" of the Bankruptcy Court.
Because the filing has occurred, the bankruptcy estate has come into existence.
NOW YOU WILL RECEIVE A LETTER FROM THE BANKRUPTCY TRUSTEE, USUALLY REFERRED TO AS "THE TRUSTEE LETTER", and it will ask you to mail or fax copies of documents to the trustee who has been appointed in your case. A trustee letter in Arizona may look like this, or it may be somewhat different. At a minimum, the trustee will want to see COPIES of the titles to your vehicles, deeds to real property in which you have an interest, and copies of three years of tax returns.
Send the materials that the trustee asks for; failure to do so is a recipe for disaster. Keep two full sets of copies, just so you can take one to the First Meeting of Creditors as a safety net in case the Trustee didn't receive or can't find your package of copies. If you don't comply with the Trustee Letter, you are in for a world of hurt of your own making. Don't make your own world of hurt!
You will also receive a copy of the Notice of Bankruptcy Filing that was received by your creditors. It will set out the date and time and place of your first meeting of creditors, the date for objections to your property claimed as exempt, and the dates for objecting to your discharge or the discharge of a particular debt.
