Feeling the Economic Hurt of the Coasts in Tulsa

By Joel LaCourse | Published on January 27, 2012 | 0 Comments

Although Tulsa, Oklahoma, is nestled in the heart of the heartland, it’s certainly not disconnected from the world’s economic patterns, says Joel LaCourse of Stoops and LaCourse, PLLC. While the Midwest enjoys a little bit of delay before feeling the effects of national economic woes, those woes eventually arrive. Just like people on both coasts, folks in Tulsa are dealing with foreclosures and the mortgage crisis, too. Everybody’s in the same boat economically. Job losses are affecting LaCourse’s clients significantly. While the amount of job losses may not have been as drastic in Tulsa as in cities on the coasts, the cut in hours has left many people turning to bankruptcy, says LaCourse.

Many local employers have completely cut overtime hours, which means that homeowners who had come to depend on those extra wages have lost them. Other employers have cut full-time hours to 30 hours a week. The economic impact of these decisions on the greater Tulsa community is tremendous, says LaCourse. A Tulsa bankruptcy attorney has to get creative: To help people avoid losing the assets they rely on, the right filing status has to be found for the client, and no two clients’ economic situations are exactly the same. The idea is to find the best bankruptcy fit to allow the quickest financial recovery for the client, says LaCourse.

The issue is that the clients of the Tulsa bankruptcy attorney had organized their lifestyles around their dependable overtime, or their dependable 40-hour-a-week jobs. Once they lost the overtime or 10 of those workweek hours, bills weren’t able to be paid, the debt started to pile up, the creditors were hounding. Together with the client, the bankruptcy attorney in Tulsa goes through all the assets and a number of new budgets; they figure out what could be kept and what could be let go to creditors; they figure out how to reconstruct debt obligations in a way the client can handle. LaCourse maintains that it’s possible to go through with a successful bankruptcy while keeping some of a family’s most important assets like the house and vehicles.

Bankruptcy is a sensitive process legally and emotionally. On the legal side, the right decisions have to be made both by clients and their Tulsa bankruptcy attorney for the results to actually help the client reconstruct a better financial life for the future. Emotionally, the process is sensitive because somebody’s honor and sense of pride is at stake. With the right approach, bankruptcy can help safeguard a better situation in the long run for an entire family.

*Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. You should not rely on this article as a legal opinion on any specific facts or circumstances, and you should not act upon this information without seeking professional counsel. Publication of this article and your receipt of this article does not create an attorney-client relationship.

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