Suggestions about personal bankruptcy, debt consoliation, and credit counseling?

I am currently trying to help someone figure out a way to either eliminate his debt or get on low monthly payment for all of them. He is about $15000 in debt now. I've tried to talk to some of the creditors but they refused to work with us. There are 3 bills that haven't been paid on for about the past year do to the fact he had no extra money and ended up with lots of medical bills. I've looked into debt consolidation but it was very expensive and most of the ones I have actually talked to tried making it sound better then it really was. He has one judgement against him already and one of the credit cards turned him over to an attorney and they filed against him so we don't have much time to figure something out.

We have tried to get a secured loan using our truck (we don't want to lose our truck) but we haven't heard back. His credit is really bad so we dont have much hope with that and since I'm not working I can't co sign. We have been trying to get all the smaller bills paid off so that we could get these other bills taken care of but when I spoke with the creditors or the people they turned the accounts over to the min. payment they would accept was $500 - $1000 and there's no way he can do that. Please give me some suggestions.

Answer: You have a number of options.

You have already tried the obvious solutions, including getting a debt consolidation loan. Another option may be credit counseling, where a non-profit credit counselor negotiates a settlement with your creditors. They can often negotiate for low or zero interest.

The final option may be personal bankruptcy. This is a drastic step, but if you have more debt than you can handle, this option may be your only choice, particularly if one of the creditors has commenced legal action. Fill out our bankruptcy evaluation form and a bankruptcy attorney will contact you to review your situation and help you determine if Chapter 7 bankruptcy is the correct option for you.