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Podcast: Bankruptcy and Marriage - A Conversation with a Bankruptcy Attorney

Bankruptcy and Marriage - A Conversation with a Bankruptcy Attorney

Welcome to the Modern Husbands podcast, where any combination of Dr. Bruce Ross, Christian Sherrill, and Brian Page host national experts who share winning ideas to manage money and the home as a team.


Today we welcome Adrienne Hines, Ohio's renowned bankruptcy expert with nearly three decades of experience. Adrienne has redefined bankruptcy, transforming it from a daunting concept into a tool for financial wellness and dignity. She's more than a lawyer; she's an ally who combines sharp legal expertise with deep empathy, guiding those in financial distress towards stability. 


Adrienne uses TikTok to challenge bankruptcy myths and promote financial literacy. Her innovative approach earned her the 2023 Best Bankruptcy Advice Award at the FinTok Awards by Debt.com. 


In today’s episode we'll talk about all things bankruptcy in marriage, ranging from how to prevent it, when it is appropriate, and many things in between. Enjoy the show.



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Questions Answered


0:00:00 Introduction

0:01:05 How does bankruptcy work and what are the differences between Chapters 7 and 13 bankruptcy? 

0:04:48 How long does bankruptcy take? 

0:07:53 Do you lose your retirement in any type of bankruptcy?

0:12:51 What are some common questions or concerns your social media followers and clients have regarding bankruptcy and marriage? How do you address these concerns?

0:14:46 Can your spouse file bankruptcy without it including your own personal assets? If so, can you explain how this works? 

0:20:36 What are the common origins of bankruptcy?

0:24:28 Is it possible for your spouse to file bankruptcy without including the personal assets accumulated in marriage?

0:26:12 Fast Facts Game

  1. Can bankruptcy stop a foreclosure?

  2. Can bankruptcy stop eviction?

  3. Can bankruptcy stop wage garnishment?

  4. Is the following possible in the bankruptcy process?

  5. Filing bankruptcy without losing house 

  6. Filing bankruptcy with a student loan 

  7. Filing bankruptcy to stop foreclosure 

  8. Filing bankruptcy to keep your car 

  9. Filing bankruptcy to eliminate credit card debt

  10. Filing bankruptcy to eliminate student loans

  11. Filing bankruptcy to eliminate medical debt

  12. Filing bankruptcy to eliminate private student loans

  13. Filing bankruptcy to eliminate your car loan

0:30:05 What is one simple lesson you want listeners to walk away with this episode?

0:32:30 Where can people go to follow you?


Follow @theladylikelawyer on all platforms.


Transcript


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (00:14)

Let's just start with explaining how the most common bankruptcies for everyday people work. Let's start at like a 20,000 foot level.


Adrienne Hines (00:25)

Sure. So consumer bankruptcies are for people who are individuals or small business owners. That's generally the type of people that are my clients. Those people are going to be filing two very specific kinds of bankruptcies. The first and primary one, the most common one, and the one most people want to be in is called a Chapter 7 liquidation. The second type of that most consumers in the United States would enter into if they weren't going into a Chapter 7 would be a Chapter 13 bankruptcy. And just for clarification purposes, there is something called a Chapter 11, and that is large businesses and not really something that regular ordinary people generally file, think Sears and Roebuck and stuff like that. But a Chapter 7 and a Chapter 13 are the two primary types of bankruptcies that people are going to file.


In the United States. And for the most part, people do want to file a Chapter 7, but it is income means tested. So people have to pass or qualify. Their household income has to be under a certain limit based on their state and their household size in order to file a Chapter 7. And for those people who don't qualify, they are the ones who are going to start looking at the possibility of a Chapter 13.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (01:52)

And so, what are some other differences between chapter 7 and chapter 13?


Adrienne Hines (01:57)

Well, the differences are exceptionally large. I think the similarities, there are very, the only real similarities we have is that they are technically bankruptcies. The similarities are that they are overseen by federal bankruptcy judges. And in both bankruptcies, it is possible to discharge or get rid of completely some or all of your debt. In a chapter seven bankruptcy, people are going to be able to get rid of all of their general unsecured non-priority debt if they qualify under the means test. Whereas Chapter 13 people, their income is a little bit too high to file a 7 or maybe a lot too high to file a 7, and so therefore they are channeled, they're put into a payment plan according to what they can afford.


So the lower income, you know, people who just barely don't qualify to file a Chapter 7 are going to be in a Chapter 13, probably paying less than what they owe their creditors over the life of five years. And at the end of that five years, the remaining debt that they had, that they really could not afford to pay based on their income, is discharged. So once you no longer qualify to file a Chapter 7 and get rid of all of your debt straight away,


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (02:56)

Hmm.


Adrienne Hines (03:23)

Then we start to look at how much money you have coming into your house to determine how much you can afford to pay your creditors. And if you cannot afford to pay them all at the end of five years, which is the statutory bankruptcy period, then you don't have to pay them the rest. And that's the advantages of bankruptcy. You can see that the differences are quite expanse. One you have to end up paying money back for three to five years and the other you don't.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (03:49)

And both of them take three to five years, right? Chapter seven and 13, okay.


Adrienne Hines (03:53)

No, that's a good question. No, one of the advantages of the chapter seven is that it takes about four and a half months. And chapter seven is really a magic wand. Yeah, I mean, when I say it's the preferable form of bankruptcy, it really is. Most people are crustfallen and their hearts drop into their stomach when they learn that they do not qualify to file a seven. That's when we start talking about a 13. And there's actually a couple of reasons why you might not file a seven.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (04:00)

Wow, really?


Adrienne Hines (04:22)

even if you qualify. When I mentioned, when I talked about a chapter seven, if you notice, I said it's called a chapter seven liquidation. And so there's really two catches in a chapter seven. There's two reasons why people may not be able to file it. One is their income is too high. But the second reason they may not be able to file a chapter seven is they may have something valuable, you know, like their house or their car or something.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (04:33)

Yeah.


Adrienne Hines (04:51)

in which they have equity that would otherwise be liquidated if they filed a seven. And that's really the complicated part of bankruptcy, is the complicated part of trying to give blanket advice to people because the problem with this system is that every single state has different values for what you can keep. So in the state of Ohio...


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (05:16)

Wow.


Adrienne Hines (05:21)

If you qualify to file a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, and you had a home, and that home was worth $200,000, and you and your spouse owned it outright, no mortgage, that means that house is worth, you have $200,000 in equity. In the state of Ohio, you could file a Chapter 7 and keep your home. But in the state of Illinois, you could not.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (05:47)

Wow, that is a significant difference.


Adrienne Hines (05:49)

Yes, that's the difference. In Ohio, the exemption for your homestead is $161,000 each person. So technically in the state of Ohio, my husband and I could own a home worth over $320,000 with no mortgage and keep it. But the state of Illinois has a $15,000 exemption for your homestead each person.


So the max that anybody in Illinois can protect is $30,000. So you can see that the analysis for bankruptcy begins to change very significantly when you have assets and depending on where you live. The people who are ideal for Chapter 7 are people who are below the means, who don't have a lot of stuff, quite frankly.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (06:36)

And you continue to go back to the word assets and we've talked home, but we haven't brought up like retirement plans, like a 401k. So let's say that you file chapter seven bankruptcy, because that seems to be the one that most people go toward. That's the one that is the most common. Okay, do you lose your retirement?


Adrienne Hines (06:57)

Right, yes.


That is a great question, and I think it is one of the most important reasons why I am on a mission to make sure people understand what bankruptcy is.


The answer is no, you do not lose any ERISHA qualified pension that you have accumulated up until the date of filing a bankruptcy. All ERISHA qualified pensions, 401Ks, 403Bs, PERS, STRS, any of those are protected completely under federal law. And the reason that is important is because


absolutely nobody should ever be liquidating a retirement plan of any consequence, small one or big one, to pay down credit cards, medical bills, or personal loans if they otherwise qualify for a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. And that's truly what my mission in life is, Brian, is to simply make sure that people hear the word bankruptcy. They are desensitized to it enough to get over that.


you know, that pit in your stomach that makes you feel like that's a really, really bad thing because too many people wait until they've already liquidated their 401k and they haven't really solved the problem. They cash out pensions to pay credit cards and they still end up in my office and now we're filing bankruptcy, something they always wanted to avoid, you know, in theory, and they squandered a portion of their, or all of their retirement. And as somebody who's just getting older every day,


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (08:20)

Wow.


Adrienne Hines (08:39)

I recognize how incredibly dangerous that is, and it's the belief that bankruptcy is bad that is driving people to make decisions sometimes that is not in their financial best interest. So thank you for asking that. That's exactly why I'm out on a crusade.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (08:55)

I'm beside myself because it's not uncommon to read articles in the mainstream media about borrowing from your 401k as an example. And to me, it sounds like a chapter seven bankruptcy allows you to have a financial


Adrienne Hines (08:57)

Huh.


Yeah.


Well, that's exactly the case. The entire purpose is to provide protections for your future. I mean, that is what bankruptcy is for. It is designed to completely clear the game board and start over. And people think that's a bad thing, but quite frankly, it's exactly what it sounds like. It is a fresh start, and it happens fast.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (09:26)

Is that the case?


Adrienne Hines (09:52)

I think a lot of people shy away from or disgusted by or horrified by the word bankruptcy because they think that their credit is going to tank and they won't be able to do anything meaningful in a financial realm for another 10 years. And that is, that's not true. Rebuilding credit after bankruptcy is, is common, relatively easy if you understand how to do it and can be done fairly quickly. I had somebody just post.


two days ago on one of my social medias that they filed bankruptcy in November. They had their bankruptcy hearing in December. And this was just a couple of days ago in the beginning of January. And they said that their credit score had popped up 190 points. That's not uncommon. And people don't realize that looking at bankruptcy doesn't mean that you're hamstringing your future. Quite frankly, it means that you're opening it up. And I come from the philosophy of


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (10:47)

Well.


Adrienne Hines (10:50)

of finance that says, listen, the longer you sit in misery with no plan, the less time you have to start to get into the financial game and build wealth. If you spend the next 10 years paying down all your debt and eating ramen noodles, two things are happening. Number one, you're not building wealth, starting businesses and taking risks. And number two, you're spending 10 years of your life in a very...


difficult place. You're not enjoying life. I mean, we only have so much time on this earth and we really do have to learn how to balance joy and kindness and love and family and all those things. And it's not easy to do those things when we are driven by overwhelming and crippling debt. We need an escape hatch so we can start over and start rebuilding because you need to be able to have the money to retire.


You know, retirement is a scary, the older I get, the scarier it looks and the more passionate I am about protecting what's going to happen to you in the future.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (11:58)

Well, I know you use your platform to educate folks about financial health and bankruptcy. And you also get questions from folks who follow you and then of course from your own clients as you are a bankruptcy attorney. What are some of the common questions or concerns that you get and how do you address those?


Adrienne Hines (12:23)

The two biggest questions that I get are, will I be able to blank after bankruptcy? And it's usually buy a car, buy a house, rent an apartment, all those things. Will I be able to blank? And the answer is of course they will be. That's the point of bankruptcy. But they don't usually see that. They don't understand the path. They can't envision.


a way that happens. So a lot of times it's simply kind of explaining the process so that they are comfortable with it and they can trust fall enough to believe the lawyer that's talking to them. And the second of course is, will I lose my blank? Will I lose my house? Will I lose my car? Will I lose my blank? Those are the two biggest questions. Will I be able to do something in the future and or will they take my blank?


And the first answer is very easy. As a general rule, I know that historically and statistically speaking, that if these people put forth just a tiny bit of effort afterwards, they're going to start to rebuild their credit. I think the consumers these days are way more educated about credit than they were even 10 years ago, from my perspective.


So of course they're going to be able to start to, just the fact that they're asking the question shows that they know why they're asking the question and they're probably going to pay a little closer attention. And when it comes to the second question, will I keep my blank? You know, that's a more specific question depending on the exemptions in their state and what equity they have in their stuff, right? And equity is what it's worth minus any secured loan, like a car loan is, you know, secured by a car.


Mortgage is secured by the house. Those are called secured loans and if you have secured loans whether or not you end up keeping those things through a bankruptcy are going to depend on whether or not it makes sense to you but you use the secured loan you subtract it from the value of the thing to get your equity. So if you have a house worth $100,000 you've got an $80,000 mortgage you've got $20,000 in equity.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (14:31)

What?


Can you take a step back and explain to our listeners the difference between a secured loan and an unsecured loan? And then from there explain equity and the formula that you just provided.


Adrienne Hines (14:50)

I can absolutely do that. I sometimes forget that I plow through some of these words that I use every single day. I think that in my perspective, in my practice, I've really come up with basically three different types of debt to help explain to my clients and people what's going on. And I think of it as a pyramid. Imagine a pyramid cut into three sections. You've got a top triangle, you've got a middle, and you've got the base.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (14:55)

That's okay.


Adrienne Hines (15:20)

The top tip of the triangle is going to be priority debt. I call it priority debt. It's not what everybody else does. That's going to be taxes, child support, alimony, for the most part, student loans, because they are very difficult to get rid of in bankruptcy. So those are things we really aren't going to touch most of the time in a chapter 7 bankruptcy.


Those are priority debts. If you are in a chapter 13, priority debts get paid first. OK? Not student loans, but the rest of them do. So priority are taxes, child support, alimony, student loans for the most part, because that's what we know can't go into a bankruptcy. The second kind of debt is secured loans. And those are going to be right in the middle. Secured debt is exactly a loan that is extended, that is secured by something. That is.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (15:51)

Okay.


Adrienne Hines (16:15)

a title, right? A title to a car.


I'm going off on a tangent. Let me pull back here. I know you're gonna... So the secured loan section is going to be a house. It's going to be a car. It's gonna be a boat. It's going to be a John Deere tractor that you financed from Tractor Supply. These are what are called secured loans. And in a chapter seven bankruptcy, that middle category...


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (16:23)

No, that's a good example. Tidal La Plara.


Adrienne Hines (16:50)

The first thing you need to do is determine whether or not you have equity in it. So you can owe money on it and still have equity, right? If your car's worth $20,000, but you only owe $8,000 on the loan, your equity is $12,000, okay? So the first thing we need to do is determine equity in all of that middle category that's secured stuff and cross-reference it against your state's exemptions.


your homestead exemption for your house, your vehicle exemption for your car. If you pass the exemption test, then you get to decide whether or not you want to keep those through a Chapter 7. If you don't have too much equity, you get to decide, do I keep it or surrender it at no cost to me? People tend to keep them when they owe what they're worth or more, or they've got equity or they owe about what they're worth.


People tend to surrender them when they owe more than they're worth, when they are upside down. So in that secured category, you get a choice after equity analysis, do I want to keep it or not? And you can surrender things you can't afford or you don't want anymore. That's an advantage of a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Everything else, all the other debts you can usually think of, you can't afford.


credit cards, medical bills, personal loans, that old Verizon that you had back in your early 20s when you were a bit loose and fancy free and you didn't pay it and it's compounding and it's on your credit. Those are the types of things that go away in bankruptcy. And specifically a chapter seven bankruptcy wipes those out completely if you're able to file. That is the advantage. And you can see that in bankruptcy there's a hierarchy of debt.


The type of debt we can get rid of straight away is the most dangerous, the unsecured, the creditors didn't get any type of security, it's high compounding interest, and it's high risk debt that company is engaging in. They take the risk, the interest is high, and their business model recognizes and builds into the fact that there are defaults.


And that's why it's so important to understand what bankruptcy is. We're not going in there and letting you walk away from taxes and child support. And we're not letting you get free cars and free houses. We are allowing you, and by we I mean the bankruptcy court, not me. They are allowing you to reorganize your life, drill down to the important things right this moment, wipe out the stuff you can't handle.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (19:21)

Yeah.


Yeah.


Adrienne Hines (19:35)

and allow you to restart. That's what it is.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (19:40)

And so what are some of the common reasons that you've run into that people file for bankruptcy? And when I say common reasons, like what was the initial cause, right? Like, was it a job loss? Was it, you know, they got cancer and racked up a bunch of medical bills, you know, examples like that.


Adrienne Hines (20:03)

Medical debt is a very big one. Obviously, we live in a nation that does not have accessible, affordable health insurance for all. We just don't. And as a consequence, we have a lot of people out there that have a lot of medical bills. So I would say that is a very big.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (20:05)

Okay.


Adrienne Hines (20:28)

driving factor and understand that somebody who has medical bills who maybe doesn't have insurance Those people are usually going to have high credit card bills, too Because a lot of those medical providers are forcing you to pay something in order to get Get the next level of treatment or once you're through the emergency room in order to see the orthopedic doctor. You've got to pay a deposit You know


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (20:47)

Uh.


Adrienne Hines (20:51)

And so those people tend to have medical bill or credit cards as well or they've taken out a personal loan from their local bank Or from the strip mall down the street And and so when we have medical bills We almost always have credit cards too because medical events are expensive people have to stay in hotels Or they you know, they can't work because they're caring for somebody so it is a vicious cycle medical bills The second is of course divorce


you know, people who are going through a divorce, they, you know, they had been together, they had made decisions together, they'd made financial decisions together at some, you know, down along the way, and now they're in a place where they're creating two separate households and nothing can be maintained. They cannot maintain any level of lifestyle that they had before, and now things can be very, very tight, and one person...


You know, they just cannot afford the things that they had purchased together because they now are separated and need new households. So that's number two. I file for a lot of older people who are widows and widowers, people who had not planned very well for their future or, you know, who lost a spouse and didn't understand really what the loss of their income was going to mean to them. It's very frustrating and sad for me to file for a-


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (22:02)

Okay.


Adrienne Hines (22:16)

elderly people. I think it's one of the reasons why I get very passionate about trying to protect your retirement because I do see how fragile some of these people's living situations can be. And, you know, of course, COVID, job loss, demotion, loss of overtime.


You know, everybody's got an opinion, you know, you shouldn't have bought that truck, you had overtime, you should have known that overtime was gonna go, but if you work for eight years with overtime, you start, you know, you don't have any other choice but to rely on it because that's what you know. And so nobody in this world has the discipline to budget their lives the way that we technically should on paper and therefore.


a little teeny thing can fall off the, a little screw can fall off the wheel, holding the wheel together, and it just all starts to fall apart. And that's usually what happens.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (23:15)

Have, is it possible for your spouse to file bankruptcy, but for you not to file bankruptcy or is, or even a broader question is, can your spouse file bankruptcy, but do so without including like the personal assets that you have accumulated in your marriage?


Adrienne Hines (23:44)

A spouse can file without their other spouse. Married people can file by themselves without their spouse, whether they are happily married and living in the same home or whether they are separated, living separately. But if you are going to file bankruptcy without your spouse, a couple of things you need to know. First and foremost is that you have to pass the income test using your household.


So I have a lot of people who will say, like a stay at home mom wants to file because she maybe came to the marriage with some debt, but her spouse now makes a lot of money and the household doesn't pass the means test. So one spouse can file without the other, but the household still has to pass the means test. That's number one. The second issue is that when somebody files for bankruptcy,


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (24:11)

Ah.


Adrienne Hines (24:38)

everything that matters, everything that is evaluated by the bankruptcy court, is that which is titled in that person's name. And so if husband and wife own a home together and one spouse wants to file bankruptcy, you just simply need to analyze the equity. And if it's two homeowners, husband and wife, then each person can claim half the equity.


So if your house had $100,000 in equity and you're filing a loan, you have $50,000 in equity and your $50,000 in equity has to pass your state's exemption. That's how that works.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (25:05)

Okay.


All right, we're going to play a fast facts game. So I'm going to give you what I hope to be a straightforward question, but I realized that in the world of bankruptcy, there's always nuances that are difficult to explain with a yes or no kind of question and answer, but we're going to give it a shot. All right. So are you ready for this?


Adrienne Hines (25:21)

Okay.


Okay.


I am. And let me say, if you ask me a question that is, like, I know that it would need to be state specific, I'm going to use Ohio. Okay? I'm going to use Ohio. I'm going to use Ohio since that's where I'm at. Those are the, that's what I know. So just so everyone understands.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (25:53)

Okay, oh, that's good. Okay, that's good to know.


Yeah, and I'm glad you reminded me and reminded our listeners that, you know, a lot of this is state specific. That's important.


Adrienne Hines (26:08)

The exemptions are state-specific. The means test numbers, the income limit numbers, change a little bit too, but they tend to be much more similar in similar categories, but the exemptions are what vary wildly.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (26:14)

Yep.


Gotcha. Okay. All right, first question. Can bankruptcy stop a foreclosure? Can bankruptcy stop an eviction?


Adrienne Hines (26:28)

Yes.


it can cause an eviction.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (26:37)

Can bankruptcy stop wage garnishment?


Adrienne Hines (26:40)

Yes, absolutely. It's one of the primary reasons why people run to my office in a desperate panic.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (26:47)

Now in this next set of questions, the prompt is whether or not the following is possible in the bankruptcy process.


Adrienne Hines (26:58)

Okay, we're probably going to use Ohio just in case preemptively speaking. Okay.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (27:02)

Okay, all right. Can you file bankruptcy without losing your house?


Adrienne Hines (27:10)

Usually, yes.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (27:11)

Can you file bankruptcy with a student loan?


Adrienne Hines (27:15)

Yes, but whether or not your student loan is dischargeable remains to be seen and it's a very difficult path to discharge student loans.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (27:17)

Can you?


Can you file bankruptcy to stop a foreclosure?


Adrienne Hines (27:32)

Absolutely. Another reason why people run to my office very, very quickly in a panic.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (27:38)

Can you file bankruptcy to keep your car?


Adrienne Hines (27:43)

Yes, you can. I'm not a big fan of it, but yes.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (27:48)

Can you file bankruptcy to eliminate credit card debt?


Adrienne Hines (27:52)

Absolutely.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (27:53)

Can you file bankruptcy to eliminate student loans?


Adrienne Hines (27:57)

Generally, no, but there are very small lanes that are available there.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (28:03)

Can you file bankruptcy to eliminate medical debt?


Adrienne Hines (28:07)

Absolutely. It's one of the primary reasons why people need bankruptcy.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (28:12)

Can you file bankruptcy to eliminate private student loans?


Adrienne Hines (28:16)

Private student loans are treated very similar to federal student loans. They fall under the same rules and categories. And the answer is, it is very, very difficult, but there are some lanes available there under certain circumstances.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (28:32)

Can you file bankruptcy to eliminate your car loan?


Adrienne Hines (28:38)

Not if you want to keep the car. You don't get a free car in bankruptcy. You can surrender your car and give it back and not be responsible on the loan anymore, but you'd have to find something else to drive.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (28:50)

Perfect. And what is one simple lesson you want listeners to walk away with from this episode?


Adrienne Hines (28:58)

I really want people to hear me say that bankruptcy is a legal, constitutionally protected way to address unmanageable, overwhelming, unsecured debt. And if you are looking at maybe cashing out some equity in your home, before you go take that home equity line of credit out.


before you take that 401k loan out, before you cash out a pension or STRS plan or something for the purpose of paying debt, I would strongly, strongly advise that you talk to a bankruptcy lawyer. And here's the thing, Brian. People say a lot of the time, I'm self-serving, I'm a lawyer, I'm a sleazy lawyer, I just want money from people. And the reality is that in the world of debt,


there are only so many places you can go to for information. And a lot of people go to their local bank. And the local bank doesn't have an interest in helping you out of your problem. They have an interest in giving you a consolidation loan or a home equity loan line of credit so that you can pay them. So where else do you go to get information about debt, right?


Are you going to go to a debt settlement company that you find on the internet or from an ad on television? Those people are usually scammers. And that's important to hear. So when I say go talk to a bankruptcy lawyer in your area, it's because lawyers are lawyers, right? We have ethical standards. We are licensed by the state Supreme Court in which we practice. And bankruptcy lawyers practice in federal court.


And we have to be admitted into the bankruptcy court to practice. The judges can decide whether or not we should be able to practice there. They can say, you're not allowed to practice here. Get the heck out. And they've done that before. And I think that's important because when you're trying to talk about your finances and get truthful information, I think a free consultation with somebody who's educated and who has to keep your information confidential and private is bad.


the absolute best option that you could ever get. And so it's free, it's private, you know your spouse doesn't even have to know you talk to a lawyer, but the information that you receive could be exceptionally life-changing. That's what I think.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (31:36)

And so where can people go to follow you?


Adrienne Hines (31:39)

People can go to, they can follow me on my TikTok, on my Instagram, on my Facebook, on my threads. I'm at The Ladylike Lawyer. You can go to my personal website, thel You can follow through and come to my law firm in Sandusky, Ohio, if you're looking to schedule an appointment with me.


Or you can just stick around and watch my videos. I've got over 800 videos on my TikTok account that talk about the bankruptcy process. And every question that anyone could ever imagine has probably been answered on there. Ha ha.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (32:14)

And for those of you who are fans of Tommy Boy, yes, Callahan Auto Parts is the, Sandesky, Ohio is the home of Callahan Auto Parts. Oh, I love it. Thank you for joining us today and sharing your wisdom.


Adrienne Hines (32:25)

That's where it is, right there, Sandusky, Ohio.


Thanks, Brian. It was really nice. It was nice talking to you today. Thank you for letting me get some of my message out and I'm looking forward to our continued relationship moving forward. Very happy to have you in my circle.


Brian Page, Modern Husbands (32:46)

Likewise.

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