My wife and I filled for Ch.7 on 04/14/03...our meeting with the creditors is 05/29/03. We are eager to start repairing our credit and possibly establishing new credit ASAP. I received a CC offer from Household in the mail last week and assume I would be approved if a applied. My credits scores range from 568 to 590 as of 4/03. If I applied for new credit before my CH.7 is discharged could the court dismiss our case? I know it sounds irresponsible to try to establish new credit before my case is even heard but we both want to begin rebuilding our credit ASAP. Would this be considered illegal? Would a current CR reflect that I filled for CH.7 this soon? Thanks for the help and opinions.
IMHO It's way too soon. At worst, you risk the potential of your bk being dismissed; at the very best any new debt would not be dischargeable. Wait until after you receive your discharge paper. You'll probably receive similar offers from Household then. Avoid (like the plague) high fee, rip-off offers from outfits like First Premier "Gold" or Cross Country Bank, unless you can't get anything else. Apparently HH has mailed out a slew of offers in the last few months. It's one of the better "subprime" cards. I have one that just came about a month ago.
Having gone through a CH7 recently myself, my take is that you want to wait to rebuild credit until after the BK has been discharged. This is because you will want to be sure that your credit reports are accurate after BK. Here is a helpful link on that topic: http://www.molleurlaw.com/articles-03.htm A couple more things to consider: 1) The more accurate I know my CR's are, assuming timely payment of bills post-discharge, the more likely I will be able to get credit. 2) Before I go applying for credit again, I want to make sure I've dealt with the issues that caused me to file BK to start with. Unless you determine to deal with the root issues that caused you to file BK, your quest to get new credit will only lead you to the BK corner again. Just my 2¢, John
Re: Re: Credit Card Offers pre-bankruptcy?? I agree 100%....I believe that my wife and I have both learn from our past mistakes. Alot of the problems were caused by immaturity and a past divorce. It took over 15 years to damage our credit I hope it doesn't take 15 years to rebuild it. Thanks
I agree with you, John. I was making the assumption that the reasons s/he had to file were transitory ones such as medical issues.
