Chapter 13 gives you much more power over your mortgage and other home-related debts so that you can sell your home when it’s best for you.

Our last blog post was about using Chapter 7 “straight bankruptcy” to buy time to sell your home. The advantages of Chapter 7 are that it’s usually quite quick and costs less that Chapter 13. It also importantly focuses on your present income and on the present value of your home. If you expect either your income or your property’s value to increase substantially, Chapter 7 could be your better option.

If you are behind on your mortgage, and are thinking of selling your home, you can often delay selling for many months or even for years.

Our last blog post was about the relatively long time Chapter 13 gives you to catch up on your mortgage. Besides the 3 to 5 years it gives you, Chapter 13 also protects you while you’re also dealing with other important debts. So filing a Chapter 13 case is a powerful way of buying time and gaining flexibility for your home.

If you are behind on your mortgage and want to sell, you may be able to delay the home sale for years and pay the arrearage out of the sale.

In a recent blog post we listed 10 ways Chapter 13 helps you keep your home. Here’s the third one of those ways:

Unpaid support is the highest priority of the “priority” debts. Chapter 7 frees up money to pay it. Chapter 13 buys you time to do so.

In our last blog post we said that, very broadly speaking, if none of your unsecured debts are “priority” ones, you’d lean towards filing a Chapter 7 “straight bankruptcy” case. And if you did have a “priority” debt, or more than one, and the amount owed is relatively large, you’d lean towards filing a Chapter 13 “adjustment of debts” case.

In a Chapter 13 case you can schedule to sell your home as part of the court-approved plan, or leave it more flexible.

In our last blog post we described briefly how Chapter 13 can often give you tremendous flexibility about the timing of the sale of your home. Here we expand on your options.