Bankruptcy filing is supposed to be a pretty straight-forward process; and for the most part it is. And then...there are clients like Miss Wolf. She first came to the office for bankruptcy in 2009 - and for a full year continued to drag her feet, determined that she was going to file Chapter 13, the 3-5 year repayment plan. Miss Wolf is a broker of certain assets, and her income fluctuates. They FINALLY convinced her no Judge, not even one high on crack and Jim Beam would approve her plan, and she converted to a Chapter 7 (generally used to wipe out consumer debt).
She keeps crying wolf, saying she's ready, then pulling back. She keeps telling us she's done, then changing her information. This is why I call her Miss Wolf. She drags and drags and drags...and finally, one day, she is "ready." But guess what? I'm not. It's the week that Boss is out of the office sick *cough cough* and I have too much to catch up on. Besides which, she has extra creditors to add, and I have to keep prying the information out of her. I finally get everything corrected and entered, and print up her petition...then try to schedule a day for her to come in.
She tells me she's too busy - WELL GET UNBUSY, LADY! I set a day at the end of Sick Week, and she makes it in to sign. It all goes fairly smoothly...but Miss Wolf drives me nuts anyway. It's what she does. Then she decides to make my life a living hell.
She wants a waiver of filing fees. She is not destitute though. Instead we convince her to do installments. There are, of course, no instructions, so I split the filing fee into 4 equal payments set for the last day of the month for 3 months, the first payment to be made at the time of filing. And then I get to the software and start to do my upload to the bankruptcy site. *dramatic pause* "Sorry, attorneys in California cannot use the automatic upload option when paying in installments." My head finds the keyboard. I have to "open" the case manually on the site; ie, I wind up having to enter quite a bit of information by hand. It takes me 45 minutes to enter all this info so she gets billed at my hourly rate of $80 per hour (I'm a bargain. My boss bills at $340 an hour.) THEN I can start my electronic upload. I pay the fee, I think we're good.
2 days later I get a call from the bankruptcy court. They inform me that the filing fee installment split is $89, $70, $70, and $70; and the dates I have are incorrect as they are made every 30 days, exactly. So I have to fix the application, then submit the order, then ask Ms. Wolf if she can take care of the additional $14.25 via cash or money order down at the courthouse. She proceeds to rip into me about how she's paying us so that this stuff is taken care of, and it was my screw up so I should fix it. After a few emails back and forth, I cease to respond to her. She emails me the next day apologizing for being a grump.
Now, Ms. Wolf SHOULD be good to go, right? Noooooooope! A week later she tells me "Oh, I have some creditors to add to my petition." I'm ready to throw my computer over our balcony. I say "Fine, but it's $26 every time we submit a new list of creditors, and I need the fee up front, and I need all the information at once." I still have not received the information from her.
Ms. Wolf is one of my interesting characters in the job I go to daily.
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