I am Clarke Kent Wittstruck, an Asheville bankruptcy attorney handling Chapter 7 cases for $850. We also handle Chapter 13 cases. I practice in the Asheville and Shelby Districts of the Federal Western District of North Carolina - Henderson, McDowell, Polk and all counties north and west of Buncombe county. I prepare large numbers of Bankruptcy petitions for clients all over Western North Carolina. My method? You fill out my questionnaire and email it to me, we schedule an appointment, usually by phone, and we discuss the pros and cons of your particular needs and decide whether filing for Bankruptcy relief is in your interest. My office attempts, as much as possible, to handle this process by phone and email to save you travel time. Below is a link to prices I charge for Bankruptcy filings and to my bankruptcy questionnaire.
| Prices for Bankruptcy |
| More Bankruptcy Info |
| Bankruptcy Questionnaire |
| Contact My Office |
Just want an appointment to discuss your options? Click the link above, complete the contact information, and we will schedule either an office or telephone consultation.
One of my goals with this site is to provide potential clients with as much information as possible to help them determine if I am the right lawyer for them. There is a lot of information about Bankruptcy on the internet. Some of it is very good, but most of it is very bad and, often misleading. So rather than try to re-invent the wheel, I have decided to use our website to point you to information I consider good and accurate. To this end I've decided to rely upon the three sites below to narrow your search for information and make the best use of your time.
Warning. But this brings up another issue: most of the bankruptcy sites you will find on the internet are commercial sites which seek information from you in the guise of determining your "eligibility" for bankruptcy, but in reality they are subscription sites which sell your information to attorneys who pay them a fee for referrals. I do not do this. And I do not believe any of the bankruptcy attorneys I know who practice in the Western District of North Carolina do this either. So skip these "eligibility" sites.
Attorney Info. Here is the truth: just about every attorney I know practicing bankruptcy in the Western District of North Carolina is a good and knowledgeable attorney. Every one. These are smart, good humored people, all wanting to help you and all doing, I think, good work. Many are specialists in bankruptcy law, meaning it constitutes more than 65% of what they do. I am not a specialist because, while we file a large number of bankruptcy cases, I also do a lot of other types of legal work and have never wanted to take on a specialist designation. Part of this is the nature of working in a smaller city, part of this because I like to do different things, but most of it results from my wanting to be able to help my clients with many different types of legal situations by developing long term client relationships and establishing the trust to handle whatever legal matter comes up - from calming their marriage disputes, to preparing their contracts, getting them compensated for injuries, to fixing their kids minor scrapes with the law, to writing their Wills to handling their Estates for their family. I like being there, knowing the history and, hopefully, what needs to be done. In fact, I started handling bankruptcy cases over 15 years ago because so many of my clients needed this assistance - usually as a result of hospital bills from a injury producing a lost of employment or the melt down of a marriage. And I believe my handling a large number of domestic cases and knowing the many traps therein has made me a better bankruptcy lawyer and handling a large number of bankruptcy cases has made me a better divorce attorney. But I do not hesitate to refer bankruptcy cases to bankruptcy specialists when the facts suggest complications best handled by a specialist.
Pricing But the majority of bankruptcy cases are straightforward and routine where the real difference between lawyers is price and ease of processing. I believe we offer the lowest prices in Western North Carolina to handle a bankruptcy case. And we offer the assistance of a very knowledgable and friendly staff. We have handled hundreds of bankruptcy cases since 1992. And each year we get better, offering more and more on line information and the ability for you to provide us with more and more information via computer instead of having to travel to our office. The Asheville/Bryson City/Shelby bankruptcy area is extremely large, so decreasing your need to travel is important. But the bottom line is we work hard for our bankruptcy clients and this makes the process much easier for you.
Can You Do This On Your Own? I like the Nolo Press site and support their mission: to educate the public. But in the name of "efficiency" the Federal Courts have, to a great extent, made it difficult for you to handle a bankruptcy case by yourself (example: you must scan and upload documents to the site from a computer). I don't think this is by design but more the result of trying to streamline the increasing case load for the Federal Courts. But the end result is it is difficult to do this on your own. The Bankruptcy Court allows non-attorney "bankruptcy preparers"--usually a free lance paralegal-- to prepare your paperwork to assist you but these folks cannot "represent" you in court if something goes off in the wrong direction. But the bankruptcy forms are available on the Federal Court site for free and if you are good with a computer (and have a scanner) and good at organizing your bills, handling your own bankruptcy case is worth considering. Another resource to look at is the Cornell site. Finally, here is a link for to the Federal Bankruptcy Court for general information.