When preparing to file for bankruptcy, your St. Louis Bankruptcy attorney will stress to you the importance of listing all of your creditors on your bankruptcy petition.  This step in the bankruptcy process is extremely important, because listing the creditors on your petition is how they receive notice of your bankruptcy, and know to stop contacting you, or even harassing you, for collection.  However, often, debtors are faced with the issue that they do not know who all of their creditors are.  This is something that is very common, especially with a creditor’s ability to sell your debt to a different company or send it to collections and write it off.  So, what do you do if you do not know who all of your creditors are? Below are a few steps that you can take:

1. Run your credit reports, or have your attorney run it for you.  This option works best when you pull from all three credit bureaus (Equifax, TransUnion, Experian).  While there is sometimes a fee to do this option, it ensures that most, if not all, of your creditors will be listed on your petition.  Sometimes very new bills, or medical bills, will not show up on your credit report (many hospitals do not report to credit bureaus), so it is important to check your credit report to make sure everyone is listed.

2.  Hold onto bills, letters, etc, that you receive in the mail.   This is a good option if you know you have medical bills or other creditors that are not appearing on your credit report.

3.  Write down creditor information from Collections calls.  If you are receiving phone calls from various creditors who are stating that you owe them money, make sure to write down their names, and collect as much information from them as you can.

When collecting information from your creditors, you will want to make sure to receive their name, their address, your account number, the amount you owe them, the date the debt was incurred, and what the debt was from (credit card, medical bill, collections, etc).

If your case is filed, and you find more creditors after then, you do not have to pay those creditors.  If your bankruptcy case is still open, you may have to pay a fee to the court to amend your bankruptcy petition and add the creditor to your bankruptcy, but the creditor would still be discharged through the bankruptcy (assuming the debt is eligible to be discharged).