Bankruptcy banking 101

In SB Chapter 11 Bankruptcy the petitioner is also the Trustee for the bankruptcy. Which is legalize for saying we had to be responsible for our own monthly financial reports to the Court. Part of the requirement of the 11 is to close all accounts, business and personal, and reopen only Debtor In Possession (DIP) accounts for the Court to monitor. This is done so the Court can charge you a monthly fee assessed against how much money you run through the accounts. Monthly reporting obligations are massive and then you pay the Court a fee for your efforts. Nice.

 

One of the requirements is that we had to bank at a Court-approved bank. We were given a list and there were just a couple of banks we could chose from. We ended up with Chase Bank which has been a great experience for me, if I can apply great to the experience of sobbing at the desk of my personal banker after spending three hours opening four "Debtor In Possession" accounts and closing our regular accounts. (For a while I was handling nine, N-I-N-E, bank accounts and trying to be accountable to the Courts.) One negative with Chase was that one of their inhouse regulations is that we could not have debit cards. Soooo, cash or check only. That was really tough.

 

Anyway, the tearful breakdown at the desk of Eric, my personal banker, bonded us in this journey and he has been really helpful to me ever since. He and his colleagues have bent over backwards to accommodate my banking dramas such as making sure when I deposit a check they walk the check through the system so that the funds are released as soon as possible - usually overnight. That has been a great help. Also, the Chase App for the Iphone is a lifesaver! I couldn't live without it. I can check my balances, transfer money, pay bills and deposit checks on my phone. It is a lifesaver. I highly recommend it!

Moral bankruptcy v financial

Here is a harsh truth. If you are a person who’s conduct is ethical and who tries to do the right thing, you are automatically at a disadvantage to those who do not have those boundaries. And believe me, in bankruptcy, you will find out who you are really dealing with. They will make themselves known by their actions when they take advantage of your situation to better their own. This is going to happen one way or another and it is a bitter pill. But there is also a kind of strange reward in seeing someone show their true face and recognizing it for what it is. Do not revert to their morally bankrupt antics to take them on. This is not about who they are, it is about who you are and you don’t want to crawl out from under the bus only to find yourself in the gutter.

Lions and tigers and bears! Oh my!

Living with the anxiety and uncertainty every day is brutal. When you are married, you live with the other person’s version of these emotions which is an additional challenge. Everyone’s experience is unique to them and each person experiences these emotions on a different time frame so when you are feeling one devastating set of emotions, your spouse is feeling their own version. It makes it impossible to coordinate good days and bad and to know when to offer support and when to stay out of the way.

Frankly, this is the kind of crisis that drives some people to commit suicide. Others escape into alcohol, drugs, overeating, affairs, criminal behavior, abusing their spouse, abandoning their families, or retreating to bed curled up in the fetal position. If you do none of the above you are already ahead of the game.

If you want to handle this onslaught successfully and with any shred of dignity, believe me, it feels like you will never get through it. For me, the most important thing I have found to deal with this is to show up every day. Just be there to deal with each thing that comes up the best I can. It is that simple and yet that is by far the most difficult thing to do.

Sleeping a full night has been impossible. The hours of midnight to 4 a.m. are when my panic attacks show up to race around in my body. The physical stress to your body cannot be underestimated. It seems impossible to sit with yourself while your mind is screaming with a thousand terrifying thoughts and your chest is so constricted it is difficult to speak. It is brutal. But every day that I get through I consider a success story. Some days are rocky, emotional and I am in floods of uncontrollable tears. But the next day is there to conquer just by showing up.

I know this may sound trite. I wish I could offer more profound thoughts. Or say I began running five miles a day, started a freelance consulting firm for bankrupt single women and started volunteering at the animal shelter to manage the stress but, no, I haven’t.

I try to find books to escape in to, a movie to watch, or walking with the dogs. I have a pre-occupation with doing laundry. My little dog Carlotta and I spend lots of time kissing each other. I am writing as a kind of therapy to sort out the noise in my head and bring some sense of order to the chaos.

Beyond that, I think one of the most important things I can do for myself is to find something, anything, to be thankful for everyday. And that can be really annoying. Some days the only things I can come up with are those things that haven’t happened. No car wreck, strokes, deaths in the family. On other days I try to remember that there are people who are in worst situations than I am. That’s sounds lame, but again, it is very true.

Most importantly, I am thankful that I have a truly brilliant and creative husband with an unstoppable determination to conquer adversity and succeed. And supportive family and friends. And these things are the most important assets of all.

One day soon that curtain will eventually come up and we will see where we are. I look at this as an  opportunity to re-evaluate what we want our lives to look like in the future and move forward from here and I am sure that we will.
　
　

The curtain goes down...

That is how our attorney explained it at least. The curtain goes down on our debt and when it comes back up the day after filing bankruptcy? It is a new beginning - without the debt. Ten months later I am not sure the curtain has risen yet.

The past 10 months have been all consuming emotionally, physically and financially 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Anxiety, fear, isolation, loneliness. These are the primary emotions, along with anger, physical distress, emotional breakdowns, terror, guilt and grief. It is overwhelming much of the time.

We thought filing a SB Chapter 11 was the answer for several reasons. We wanted to pay our creditors. We wanted to maintain our businesses. We wanted the option to maintain investment property and pending business contracts. We wanted to freeze the penalties and interest to the IRS. All these things can be accomplished with a SB 11.

We are not sure now if that was the right decision but it was the decision we made. Asking ourselves now if we should have filed a Chapter 7 is really a moot point. If we had filed a 7 we would be asking ourselves whether we should have filed the 11, so what difference does it make in the end? We did what we did and will move forward from there.

It is important to me to note that our debt was incurred in the course of doing business, not as a result of high living. There were no massive bills for designer clothes, hair extensions, spa treatments, cosmetic surgery, exotic vacations or gambling junkets. We made some business decisions that locked up our cash at the very moment the economy started to choke and the banks became non-lenders to small business owners. Bad timing. Very bad timing.

The community in which we live is small enough that everyone knows everyone’s business and word got around quickly. This contributes to the sense of isolation and can tailspin into paranoia if you let it. Our community is ruled by a small group of business leaders and families with money who decide who gets to participate and benefit from whatever deals are done. You are in or out at their convenience. This community is notorious for the cliquishness and self-righteousness of its leading citizens. Very tough to break through. The hypocrisy of these people is breathtaking and their arrogance sees them through each day feeling like they are the most righteous people on earth.

In the meantime, the curtain is very slow to rise and while we’re waiting for that magical transformation to occur, a sort of half-life goes on.

Bankruptcy from A to B and back again

Lose 10 pounds! Lose your friends! Lose your grip on reality! This and much more can be yours if you file bankruptcy. There are rules. Oh yes, there are rules according to the courts and the lawyers. However, in figuring out how to survive it, there are no rules and not much support.

The experience is a bleak no man's land of anxiety, uncertainty and devastation, the likes of which you can only hope to never experience. I know there are people who are going through worse things and I try to keep some perspective on our lot in life right now, but it is a brutal trip you don't want to take unless you have no other option.

We are in the middle or late middle of this journey, having filed a Small Business Chapter 11 almost a year ago. It's a little like being strapped in a car that you  have run off a cliff, with the hopes that you've gunned the engine enough to make it to the other side. But you're not sure where you are over that cliff and how hard the landing will be. Or if you will fall right out of the sky into the depths, far from comfort and far from home.