KEEPING AN ORGANIZED BANKRUPTCY FOLDER
PART 3 | DRAFTING DOCUMENTS FOLDER
This blog is the third in a series on keeping an organized bankruptcy folder. Today’s blog goes over the Drafting Documents Folder in detail.
At Paralegal Power our Drafting Documents Folder contains a majority of the information our paralegals need to draft bankruptcy petitions. In order to keep our paralegals organized and efficient, we use the following subfolders in this folder:
- Assets
- Bills
- Schedule I Bills
- Business
- Assets
- Bills
- Business
- Contracts
- Income
- Judgments
- Contracts
- Income
- Taxes
- Pay Stubs
- Debtor
- Joint Debtor
- Judgments
The Drafting Documents file is where the legal secretary will be filing most of the documents received. The subfolders in this folder are self-explanatory but we will go over them in detail.
ASSETS
Anything related to assets that is not a bill will be filed in this folder. Documents such as titles, deeds, notes, valuations, assessments, evaluations all go in this folder.
BILLS
All debts will go into this folder. The legal secretary is only expected to place all bills in the bills folder and not required to discern which bills are considered “Schedule I Bills.”
- Schedule I Bills
The paralegal will later go in and work with the client to figure out which bills would be considered “Schedule I Bills.” These are basic monthly bills that the debtor will continue paying such as utilities, phone bills, cable, car payments for vehicles the client will be keeping, etc.
BUSINESS
Any and everything business related will go into this folder if the client has a business of any kind.
The legal secretary is encouraged to file as many of the business documents as possible in the sub folders; however, given that these documents can be less explicit in their nature, the paralegal does expect to go through and fine tune the filing.
As long as the business documents are placed in the business folder, the paralegal can make sure they are further organized as the pleadings are drafted.
CONTRACTS
All contracts go into this folder. Typical contracts you will come across are:
- vehicle lease contract
- apartment or house lease
- a gym membership or other subscription contract
- and/or a storage facility contract in this folder.
INCOME
All income documentation, except business income (that goes in the business folder, which has a subfolder for income) goes into this folder including any:
- child support receipts
- public benefit proof such as:
- Aid to Dependent Children (ADC)
- Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF)
- Food Stamps (SNAP)
- Unemployment
TAXES
All taxes should be placed in the taxes folder and labeled by year and type such as:
- 2018 State Taxes
- 2018 Federal Taxes
- 2018 State and Federal Taxes
NAMING THE DOCUMENT
Each pleading should be named according to the date it was filed and the name of the pleading and further organized into a sub folder if there are multiple judgments.
Read the caption and title the folder the same way. For example, ABC Creditors sues our client Joseph Thomas Brown and the court pleadings are titled ABC Creditors v. Joey T. Brown. Your folder will be titled:
ABC Creditors v. Joey T. Brown
Then the pleadings in the folder should be titled the date that they were filed in Paralegal Power format and the name of the pleading. The names of the pleadings are typically located in the captions of the pleadings on the right; however, there are many exceptions to this. Summons can be particularly confusing at first.
Just do your best to title them as accurately as possible and your paralegal will continue to give you feedback allowing you to learn these different nuances in the legal field that only come along with experience. Click here to read the final post in this series.
Lorman Offers All This Professional, Accessible Paralegal Education And So Much More
About the Author
Valentina Zapata Harris
Mother | Advocate | Blogger
If you enjoyed this blog post, you might like these ones as well.
