Bankruptcy debt settlement are usually for a fraction of the stated amount. I've heard of families who have discharged over 100k of cc debt and only had to pay about 10k. Usually you will lose bigger assets like vehicles, but keep your home.

[–] stevehobbes@lemy.lol 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

You can and will lose your home in many many states (non homestead states primarily). If the person you aren’t paying is your mortgage holder, you’re definitely going to lose your home You will also almost always lose non-primary residences provided they need to be liquidated to settle your debts. You will be given any excess money from the liquidations after your debts are settled.

If you’re settling debts you’re probably doing chapter 11 not 7.

Chapter 11 requires your lenders to play ball, but if they think they can make more money by extending terms of offering a discount than if they force you into chapter 7, they will.

If you make $5k/mo and your living expenses are $3k/mo and you have $3k/mo of debt for the next 30 months, reasonable lenders would look at that and say I’d rather have $1.5k for 60 months and I believe you can pay it rather than rolling the dice in chapter 7 on what assets you have or don’t have and what they’re worth when they finally get liquidated.