Of all the questions I get asked, “can I keep my house” could be the most frequent. I have a long article about it on my site, probably too long. For one thing, the web page covers both Chapter 7 and Chapter 13. For another thing, the article covers the topic of letting the house go as well as keeping it. Here I’d like to just say a few simple words about keeping your house – the house you are living in – when you file a Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
So here I’m assuming that you are filing a Chapter 7 and you want to keep your house. If you have any equity in the house, that equity will have to be claimed as exempt in order to keep the bankruptcy trustee from taking the house away from you. In most cases claiming the house as exempt it easy. If the equity doesn’t exceed $10,000 for a single person or $20,000 for a married couple, we can claim the house as exempt under the federal exemptions. If the equity is more than that, it would be best to use the Minnesota state exemptions which allow for up to $390,000 of equity.
Once we are satisfied that your equity is protected as exempt, the next issue is the mortgages. We have to list those in the bankruptcy petition like any other debt, and that means that your personal obligation to pay them should eventually be discharged. I say mortgages in the plural, because most of my clients seem to have two – a first and a second. Some people I talk with seem to think that if their mortgage obligations are discharged, then the house is free and clear. That is not the case. The mortgage liens remain on the house even though the debt or debts themselves are discharged. Ths means that if you want to keep the house long term after filing a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, you need to plan on continuing to pay the mortgages.
This is a bit of a simplication, and for more detail read my keep my house page. But what it usually comes down to is being able to claim the equity as exempt and being able to keep making the payments.
