Montgomery County Bankruptcy Lawyer

If you are looking for a bankruptcy lawyer in Montgomery County, you have found one. We’ll answer the office question up front: we are not on Main Street in Norristown or in an office tower in King of Prussia. Our office sits just over the county line in Center City Philadelphia at 1819 John F. Kennedy Blvd, Suite 307, Philadelphia, PA 19103, a short trip in from most of the county, and honestly almost everything gets handled by phone and Zoom anyway. What matters a lot more than a Montgomery County street address is that this is a real bankruptcy practice that files in this court, and Mike handles your case himself. We are not a call center that takes your information and hands your case to someone you never meet. Your free consultation is with Mike himself, and he talks with you about your actual situation.

Montgomery County is one of the wealthiest and busiest counties in Pennsylvania, and that cuts both ways. The King of Prussia corridor along Route 202 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike holds one of the largest shopping and office hubs in the country, and the business parks in Blue Bell, Fort Washington, Horsham, and Lansdale employ tens of thousands of people. The county leans on steady, good-paying work: pharmaceuticals and healthcare (GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Janssen, Main Line Health, Jefferson Abington Hospital), defense and manufacturing (Lockheed Martin), and a deep bench of finance, insurance, and professional-services firms. When the paychecks are that good, the mortgages, car loans, and credit lines tend to be big too. So when a job ends, a marriage falls apart, a medical bill lands, or a small business stalls, the drop can be steep and fast. Solid income sitting in the same house as heavy debt is exactly what bankruptcy law is for.

Here’s what actually matters. Not where our office is. Where your case gets filed, whether you have to show up in person, and whether the thing you are scared of losing is really at risk. Here is the short version.

Your Montgomery County case at a glance

Where your case is filed	The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, 900 Market Street, Suite 400, in Philadelphia. That is the court for every Montgomery County filer.
The 341 meeting of creditors	Held by Zoom as standard practice. Most people never set foot in the courthouse.
Sheriff foreclosure sales	Montgomery County sheriff sales are run online through Bid4Assets, with auctions opening at 1 p.m. on the sale day.
Nearest office	Our Center City Philadelphia office at 1819 John F. Kennedy Blvd, Suite 307, Philadelphia, PA 19103, an easy trip in from most of Montgomery County. Almost everything is done by phone and Zoom.

Filing bankruptcy from Montgomery County

Everyone in Montgomery County files in the same place: the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The one hearing in a normal case is the 341 meeting of creditors, and that is held by Zoom, so you do not need to drive downtown or take time to sit in a courtroom. From there it usually comes down to two choices. Chapter 7 wipes out qualifying debt in a few months and most people keep everything they own. Chapter 13 puts you on a three to five year plan to catch up on a mortgage or car you have fallen behind on while holding creditors off. If a sheriff sale is already scheduled, timing is everything in Pennsylvania. A Chapter 13 filed before the sale stops it cold through the automatic stay and lets you make up the missed payments over the life of the plan. The important part to understand is that Pennsylvania, unlike New Jersey, generally gives a homeowner no right of redemption after a mortgage foreclosure sheriff sale, so the time to act is before the gavel falls, not after.

The Montgomery County towns we serve

We help people all over Montgomery County. In and around the county seat that means Norristown, East Norriton, West Norriton, Bridgeport, Conshohocken, West Conshohocken, and Plymouth including Plymouth Meeting. Along the Route 202 and Turnpike job corridor we serve King of Prussia and the rest of Upper Merion, plus Lower Merion, Narberth, and Bala Cynwyd. Up the Lansdale and Route 309 spine we cover Lansdale, North Wales, Ambler, Hatboro, Willow Grove and Upper Moreland, Horsham, Hatfield, Montgomery Township, Towamencin, Lower and Upper Gwynedd, and Whitpain. In the eastern townships closest to Philadelphia we handle Abington, Cheltenham, Jenkintown, Rockledge, Springfield, Whitemarsh, Upper Dublin, Lower Moreland, and Bryn Athyn. Out in the western and Perkiomen valley communities we serve Pottstown, Royersford, Limerick, Collegeville, Trappe, Skippack, Lower Providence, Lower and Upper Salford, Harleysville, Souderton, Telford, Franconia, Schwenksville, Green Lane, Pennsburg, Red Hill, East Greenville, and the Pottsgrove and Frederick townships. And if your town is not on this list, that does not mean a thing. We serve every municipality in Montgomery County and represent people across all of Pennsylvania.

The house, the sheriff sale, and Pennsylvania’s one hard deadline

Home values in Montgomery County are high, which means the house is usually the thing people are most afraid of losing, and there is a real deadline attached to it. Pennsylvania foreclosure is judicial, so a lender cannot just take the house. It has to send you Act 6 and Act 91 notices, file a complaint, and win a judgment before any sheriff sale can happen. When a sale is scheduled, Montgomery County runs it online through Bid4Assets with the auction opening at 1 p.m. on the sale day. Here is the part that trips people up: unlike in New Jersey, Pennsylvania generally gives you no right of redemption once that sale goes through, so there is no buying the house back afterward. The window to save it closes when the sale closes. That is why filing early matters. A Chapter 13 filed before the sale triggers the automatic stay, stops the auction, and lets you cure the missed payments over three to five years while you stay in your home. On the exemption side, Pennsylvania lets you choose between the federal bankruptcy exemptions and the state set, and most filers use the federal exemptions because Pennsylvania has no general homestead exemption of its own.

Your car, your commute, and your retirement

Montgomery County runs on cars. Whether you are driving to King of Prussia, out to a Blue Bell or Horsham office park, or all the way into Center City, losing the car often feels scarier than the debt itself. Good news: in a typical Chapter 7, most people keep their car and everything else they own, because the exemptions are built to protect the ordinary things a working family needs to keep living. Retirement is protected too. Your 401(k), IRA, and pension are generally shielded in bankruptcy, so wiping out credit card and medical debt does not mean raiding the money you have set aside for later. The goal is not to take your life apart. It is to clear the debt that is dragging on it so the paycheck you already earn actually goes to your family instead of to interest.

What it costs

Your free consultation is with Mike himself. Our fees are affordable, and we go over them with you before you decide anything, and we offer payment plans because most people looking at bankruptcy do not have a pile of cash sitting around. Qualifying Chapter 7 filers may be able to use our $999 flat-fee Chapter 7, which is exactly what it sounds like: one flat price to get the case done. Chapter 13 is quoted separately since those cases run on a multi-year plan. When you are ready, book a free consultation at /free-bankruptcy-consultation/ or just call (609) 808-3300 and we will talk it through.

Common questions about bankruptcy in Montgomery County