Hi, my name is Mike Greiner and I’m a bankruptcy attorney with the Financial Law Group located here in Warren, Michigan. Our phone number is 586-693-2000 and our website is financiallawgroup.com and I’m here to today to make a warning to you if you are struggling with debt, and you are thinking about borrowing money from a family member, and you want to pay back that family member.  My warning to you is, do not do it.  What I’ve seen, and this is the law, is that people prefer to pay back their family members, than to pay back certain credit cards that they may owe. And that is called a preference, for obvious reasons. If you pay back a relative, rather than paying back your other creditors, and then file bankruptcy, then the creditors- as you go through your bankruptcy, will be able to sue you, or sue your relative, to get back the money that you paid to them within the year before you file bankruptcy. So my advice to people is, if you are thinking about borrowing money from a relative to help yourself out of some financial trouble, do not do it. If you’re thinking about paying back a relative to where you owe money to them before you file bankruptcy do not do it. That’s the worst thing you can do.

There are things that we can do to protect assets that you may have as your going through bankruptcy, but if you have already paid back on these, there’s nothing we can do to help you at that point. Your relative might be subject of a lawsuit by the creditors as your, as your going through this process. If you want to discus your options and your dealing with financial problems um, we do have free consultations at my office my phone number if 586-693-2000, and our website is financiallawgroup.com.