Before jumping in with both feet and filing for bankruptcy too hastily I decided to have a talk with my neighbor.  Bankruptcy isn’t his area of expertise, but he is a pretty successful personal injury attorney.  I wasn’t too sure how much he’d be able to help me, but he assured me that he was very well versed in all Detroit bankruptcy laws.  He came over to my house, sat down with my wife and I and went over all of our financial paperwork – all the bills, all the letters from our creditors and all of our tax information, then he explained what type of bankruptcy would be the most likely to help us if we decided to file and what we could expect from the filing process.  He also gave us some other suggestions to ponder that may help us avoid having to file for bankruptcy and get us into a position where we could begin to repair our damaged credit scores without having to suffer the black mark of bankruptcy for the foreseeable future.  Unfortunately, as an employee of a personal injury law firm, he wouldn’t be able to represent us in our bankruptcy if we were forced to file, but he did say he would certainly make some recommendations if it came to that.