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If I ask a question here, can the public find it? If so, there a way to ask a question privately?
Optional Information: State/Country relating to Question: California
Thank you for your question and for using JA. Please click accept so I will receive credit from JA for my time.Once you ask your question, it is answered and you accept the answer it can be locked. However, you should never post any personal information online.
Hi lwpat,By "locked" do you mean the question and answer become private? I will be glad to Accept once I understand your answer.
I mean it is then locked and there is no access to the question and answer.
You just said that by "locked" you mean "locked." Could you please try to see this from my point of view. I need to know if the public will be able to google the question, or if the rest of the JustAnswer community will be able to find it. The reason is that I have a question I would like to know will not be viewable by others. Is this is what you mean by "no access"? And if so, who does the locking, and when?Once I know that no one will be able to view the question and its answer, I would like to ask the legal question (as opposed to this procedural question).Thanks for trying to see if from my vantage point.
This is a public forum. Once you ask a question, it is open to the public. The answer is then also open to the public. Once you accept either of us can ask customer service to "lock" or remove the question and answer from the forum. If it is something that private, you may want to retain a local attorney since we cannot give legal advice, only general information.
I would like to use this service (JustAnswer), and I would like the question and answer to be locked. How do I go about making the request?
You ask the question, once it is answered and you accept, you notify the expert to have it locked.
Didn't you just say either of us could make the request?
Relist: Answer quality.No contradictory or ambiguous language or information, please.
I am sorry, what the previous expert was trying to tell you was that once you ask your question and we complete our question and answer session, then the expert can ask customer service to lock the question for privacy. Once locked the question or answers cannot be viewed on google or by anyone else.However, until the question is locked, it can be viewed, so you should still avoid putting any personally identifying information in your post.
Great. OK, so just to clarify: It's only the Expert who can ask customer service, not the questioner, correct? Also, would you happen to know how long it takes for the question to get locked? (I know this forum isn't like going to an attorney's office, but you know small the world is becoming due to technology; I just would like to prevent anyone I know who might log on here in the future to guess it was me who asked something, for example.)
No, you or the expert can ask customer service to lock it. When a customer requests me to have a question locked I immediately notify customer service.Generally, how long it takes to get locked depends on how busy customer service is, but usually no more than a couple of hours.
Great; that was clear! Thanks!Well, now I don't see the Accept button.....(I'd give you my real estate question, but this one is a bit complex and I think will require a specialist.)
I am a real estate expert in the JA real estate section, so you can post your question here and I can assist you. The reason you do not see an accept button yet is because you have not asked a real question and I have not clicked on "answer" to reply to you. So if you would post your question here, I will work to assist you.
OK, but don't you want credit for answering my question about privacy?
Sure, if you would like to do that, I will respond with an answer. Thank you very much.
Experience: JA Mentor -Attorney Labor/employment, corporate, sports law, admiralty/maritime and civil rights law
Aha -- I can still Reply to you. This is my real estate question, that I would like locked after we're done, please:I had a chapter 13 followed by a chapter 7, which was discharged in December. Although this discharged my home loan debt (condo), the bank is willing to negotiate a new loan with me (they're so backed up that their records still show me as a customer, so I will go through the same steps as for a loan mod). I feel I will be able to easily afford the new loan, based on the fact that within the last 3-4 months, a couple of other units in my 20-unit complex have gone for less than half the cost of my original note. Meanwhile, my HOA gave me a 3-day notice to quit because of arrearages. This must have been their response to my letter asking for a revised bill, which my BK atty told me to write them; he said I do not owe any arrearages dated prior to the conversion from chapter 13 to 7. Yesterday I spoke to the HOA Management company and they said I must either pay the full amount or they will go through with foreclosure. The bank, on the other hand, in whose hands the property is really held, says the HOA cannot foreclose on me because the condo is not their property, and California does not allow superliening.Can I be thrown out?
The bank is not only correct here, but if the arrears were discharged in bankruptcy, the HOA has no right legally to pursue what was discharged and if they do then you have a right to countersue them for damages and sanctions including your attorney's fees needed to fight their illegal actions. You need to send the HOA another copy of proof that the arrears were discharged in bankruptcy and you need to inform them that if they take any action contrary to the bankruptcy laws you will sue them and hold them liable for damages and attorneys fees. Then ask them again for the revised bill.
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There can also be a delay of an hour or more in between my answers because I may be helping other customers or taking a break.
You can always request me through my profile at http://www.justanswer.com/law/expert-paulmjd/ or beginning your question with “For PaulMJD…”
Well, the problem is that I don't know what the proof is. Getting information out of my old BK atty was like pulling teeth, so all I could put in that letter, sadly, was that the attorney said so. If that's a separate question, let me know, and I'll hit accept on 2 sections of this (I've done it before).Thanks!
You can get the final bankruptcy order copy from the clerk of the bankruptcy court and that would have the order extinguishing the HOA arrears and that is all you need to provide is a copy of the final bankruptcy order proving the debt was extinguished.You can click on accept for any answers you choose. Thank you
Oops -- one more, please: What about my old BK attorney's assertion that only the debt pre-chapter 7 was discharged, and not the amounts during the chapter 13?
Then you will have to pay those amounts that were not discharged. Without seeing the bankruptcy order I do not know what has been discharged, but only what is discharged in chapter 7 you can stop the HOA from collecting.
Is there only 1 order in this kind of situation? Or 1 for each chapter?
There would typically be an order for each filing and you would need to check with the bankruptcy clerk.
Can you take the case?
I am sorry, the rules of the site forbid us from taking clients from this site. Thank you.
Can you tell me where to go to find someone? I have been searching for an atty since yesterday. The HOA has given me a Trustee's Sale date of May 10 (next Thursday). I just found out this morning that due to an error of omission by my bankruptcy attorney, the HOA fees never got discharged. I need to do something to extend my stay because I'm not financially prepared to move.
To find a local attorney, you can use the same sites used by other attorneys, http://www.martindale.com or http://www.lexmundi.com.
I am a surprised at that response. If there is anything I've learned from my bankruptcy case, it's that I need to always get a personal referral -- not go by deceptively impressive websites (I'm not referring to Martindale and Lexmundi here, but those would appear to be for, as you said, lawyers hunting lawyers, not clients searching for lawyers of the right fit). I am still suffering from the utter abandonment I suffered at the hands of my last bankruptcy attorney, whom I found by Googling for an expert in the field. That technique only took me from one mill-type firm, to a mill solo practitioner. How is a layperson to know? It's not as if we undergo the financial upheaval of a bankruptcy on a habitual basis.So far I've gone to Findlaw.com and Nolo.com, but the decision trees these websites present are useless, as foreclosure law is a specialty area that's not even considered by them.I went to Lexmundi but it only yielded 2 lawyers from MoFo -- far out of my range. I'm familiar with Martindale, and there's no point in my going there. I'm just a secretary living paycheck to paycheck, trying to save her modest investment.
Unfortunately, this site does forbid us from making personal referrals or taking cases from this site. I understand that you have some fear of the websites I have given you, but the martindale or lexmundi sites are really the best we can suggest because the attorneys on those sites are peer review rated. You can also try http://www.superlawyers.com, but sometimes the attorneys on that site can be the most expensive attorneys out there. I understand that legal costs are high, but I apologize that we are restricted by the rules of this site.
It's not about fear; I tried lexmundi at your suggestion with the results I stated. And I already know about Martindale. They are not consumer friendly. I guess I need something like Yelp.com that might tell me how many cases in THIS SPECIFIC field the lawyer has handled (if I can even find a review in this narrow an area of law; this is a specialty within a specialty (foreclosures, within bankruptcy). I want to avoid more of the conflicting information I've received FROM LAWYERS. (Maybe they are thinking they can logic out or intuit the answers.) I also need to see if a lawyer can either take my case on contingency, or else take a minimum down payment that I can afford. Affordability is critical. This afternoon I received a call from -- finally -- a lawyer who did have a lot of experience in avoiding foreclosures via bankruptcy. I tried to share with him the conflicting information I had received from other lawyers, and he said, "Where DO you get your information??" -- as if he believed there was something wrong with my ability to process information; it couldn't possibly be that lawyers had told me contradictory things. But they had, because they were dealing with an unfamiliar specialty. He didn't take the case after I answered one of his questions with the information I had garnered from other lawyers. He had an arrogant way; he seemed to assume the fault of my confusion lay with me, not with his esteemed peers. Plus he didn't want my small potatoes case.I'm sorry you are so restricted and can't give out names. If you can't recommend a consumer-oriented source that gives me the specific help I described, then I suppose I will need to go to Yelp or just start Googling again.
I am afraid that all of the services other than the lawyer used services we cannot verify the quality of those sites and thus we cannot recommend them to you in good faith. The attorneys are not going to take this case on a contingency fee basis I am afraid. You can try http://www.lawyers.com, http://www.findlaw.com, but you will likely find all of the lawyer sites will not give you something as narrow as a specialty as you are looking for. You have to deal with either a bankruptcy attorney or a consumer protection attorney who deals with these foreclosures regularly, but finding a "foreclosure" attorney is not going to be easy on those sites because there is no such specialty.
Ironic that because you're a lawyer you can't recommend sites like justia.com or yelp.com that -- now that I'm calmer -- I think are just the ticket. Thank you for the explanation.
It has to do with people trying to hold us liable if we send them to a non-verified site and they have a problem with someone they obtain from that site. Since we have no way to verify those sites and anyone can just place their name on them, there is no way to check the quality of the people who are listed there. Thank you.
Ironic that because you're a lawyer you can't recommend sites like JUSTIA.COM or YELP.COM that -- now that I'm no longer panicked and can reflect on things better -- I think are a couple of the best ways for consumers to find a lawyer, if they have no personal referrals and only the web to work with. But as a consumer, eventually you will need to interact with them to see if you have a rapport, and that rapport is extremely important. Some are too arrogant to listen and be responsive. They want to take the reigns before they even know what kind of horse it is. I finally found the lawyer I want to work with by calling and talking to him. I chose him from among many who had sent me advertisements after the Notice of Trustee's Sale was recorded. The ads were pretty good determiners of quality, but I called anyway to confirm my suspicions.In sum, if I could answer my own question, I'd say that the sites I mentioned are a start, as well as the mailed ads. But it's only after you make the call that you'll really know if this is someone you want to work with or not. Some lawyers are very knowledgeable but intolerably patronizing; others give the impression on paper that they can be your best friend but their abilities are limited to certain "form" types of cases. You'll only know when you call, and you'll begin to know from the first minute, even if initially it's only the receptionist who answers.
That may be true, but you also never know from ads whether they are credible or not and many of those who are out to just take money from people are very smooth and convincing talkers and can convince people they are the best lawyer in town when in reality they are just seeking to take their money. Just be careful and check them out through the state bar association and the Better Business Bureau.