"Medical Debt and Bankruptcy"

My wife and I had substantial medical and credit card debt from the previous two to three years. My wife is 15 years younger than I am and we wanted to have a child, but I had had a vasectomy at the age of thirty and already had two children from a previous marriage.

We turned to a fertility specialist in central Florida about our options for concieving a child. Our insurance didn't cover fertility treatments or any medical procedures to reverse a vasectomy. After much consideration and expense, we opted for artificial insemination using sperm havested from myself.

This new techinique was successful and we had a baby girl in 2005. It was also extrememly expensive and we incurred hospital bills and had to use resort to credit cards to help pay for it. Very quickly we found ourselves $70,000 dollars in debt to the hospital and credit card companies.

We had maxed out 4 different cards to pay for everything and now the payments were killing us. We were paying over $1700 a month in credit card payments and hospital payments and just couldn't make ends meet anymore.

We decided to move to Georgia and find better employment thinking this would help out the situation. At first it did, but the interest and payments were too much to handle.

We sought the advice of an attorney in our local area. We live 20 miles north of Atlanta and we are blessed with many competent and helpful attorneys. The one we chose specialized in bankruptcy and trial law and he was extremely helpful in getting us out of this mess.

We filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2005 and we were done in about two months with everything. We had to go to court and the attorney was with us and assured us that everything would be OK. The court proceedings lasted less than an hour and only one creditor showed up to the court date.

We had bought a pool about two years prior to filing and owed approximately $3500 on the balance. The representative for the pool company settled the debt with us for $1500 and arranged for us to make payments to his company of $50 per month until the debt was paid.

We did not lose our cars, house, or anything of value. The only debt we settled on was for the pool. The remaining $70,000 of debt was written off and could not be collected on after the judgement was settled.

It was a godsend for us and our family to be relieved of this financial burden.

Our credit was affected by the bankruptcy but not as much as you might think. We were surprised to receive credit card offers and other offers for car loans and such within a month. After three years we replaced one of our cars with a newer model with no problems whatsoever.

After 5 years our credit score is over 700 and we have no problem purchasing whatever we may need.

Now the real deal - am I proud of having to file? Absolutely not, but the situation we were in with the debt incurred in the process of trying to have a family was well worth the temporary humility of filing bankruptcy. We have a beautiful 9 year old daughter that I wouldn't trade for all the money in the world.

Our situation may not have been typical, but nonetheless it was stressful enough to warrant filing bankruptcy. It relieved us of an enormous financial burden and let us continue on with our lives.

God bless you all in all you do.

Contributed by Dan from Georgia