Arizona Bankruptcy Attorney: Can I keep my timeshare?

I'm Joseph McDaniel and I am a Board Certified Arizona Bankruptcy Attorney. My firm is a debt relief agency and I help both people and businesses file bankruptcies. If you're interested in filing a bankruptcy in Arizona or have questions, please call our firm at 602-297-3025 or visit my website at http://www.josephmcdaniel.com/ and my free Bankruptcy blog at http://www.arizonabankruptcyblog.info/ Can I keep my Timeshare in my Chapter 7 Bankruptcy in Phoenix, Arizona? Sure. You just have to pay for it. For instance, if you have a timeshare in Hawaii and you love it, and you file a Chapter 7 bankruptcy in Phoenix, Arizona, you'll list all of your assets, including your timeshare. And your Arizona bankruptcy lawyer will tell you to list all your assets, because all Arizona bankruptcy attorneys will tell you that. You'll list it's value, which you'll determine by figuring out how much it would cost to replace that asset. You will, of course, have considered selling it to buy food and medicine and gasoline, but you'll probably find that there's not much of a market for timeshares right now, because this is a depression. Which is why you're filing a bankruptcy. So when you have to file the bankruptcy because you need to stop a garnishment, or prevent a judgment from coming down (which could impair your homestead, so you don't want that), you still own the timeshare, which you listed because you don't want to be a poster child for bankruptcy fraud. And since you listed the timeshare, and the timeshare isn't exempt in the State of Arizona (which has opted-out from the list of federal bankruptcy exemptions), you have exactly two different options to hold onto the timeshare. You can certainly offer to buy the timeshare back from the trustee in your Chapter 7 case. You'll probably be the first bidder at an auction for that asset. In the old days, you'd just make an offer and the trustee would apply for approval, but these days there's usually an auction, no matter what price you offer initially. Or you can just hope that the trustee can't find a buyer for the Hawaiian Timeshare, and he or she abandons it (or closes the estate without administering (selling) the timeshare). Here's a more practical solution to the problem of timeshares in your Chapter 7 bankruptcy case. Just ignore the timeshare that you listed in your bankruptcy. And buy a timeshare from somebody else on the other side of your bankruptcy. It's more predictable, and you have all the choices in the world in this economy.