My story is pretty long so Ill try to keep it short and simple as possible.  I lost my job with a $41000 income last year.  I was a pool electrician.  Now I am unemployed resulting in my inability to pay my credit card bills.  I didnt realize how badly my wife and I were in debt but it reached $50,000.  I started with debt america and my payments were $667.00 monthly and according to them I would be debt free within 3 1/2 years.  Unfortuneately, American Express sent their legal beagles after me and I was suddenly being sued.  Debt america told me that they could not do anything for me and to show up and deal with them but they added, whatever deal that I set up with them would have no bearing or affect on my deal with debt america, which bothered me since I owed American Express the most amount of money.
I started to be concerned and I called a lawyer.  He told me that I would have to go with chapter 13 and that I would pay into this fund and all the creditors would have to fight and try to grab what they could.  So I thought that I would pay a percentage for a period of time.
I have been basically in the dark.  Ive called these people a couple of times and didnt get much information at all and no one really explained how, what, why, when, or where things were going to happen.
The filing was on March 29th, I received a notice on the 12th that the filing took place and that I needed to pay $960.00 each month to this firm for 5 years and it had to be in a cashiers check or money order starting on the 29th of April, this month.
Basically I owe $50000 dollars but when I finish 5 years from now I would be paying them $57600.  How is going with bankruptcy helping me at all!  All that I see is that it has increased my debt and caused me more hardship.
I think that I may have made a serious error in my judgement dealing with this law firm.
Can someone please explain how this can be and help me through this mentally.