Is attorney responsible if he advised wrong

Question

I have 2 cars with a credit union, went to my lawyer to file chp 7 in Jan this year. He said I have to give one back, and keep the cheaper one. So I did. Now we went to a hearing the credit union came in and said due to cross colateral I have to give the other one back and it is now almost paid off. My lawyer did not tell me about the cross colateral issue, and now when I try to ask him what to do he said surrender it, get another car. What reprocussions are there to him not telling me this, he should have known he is a bankruptcy lawyer. I cannot afford another car, that is why I am in bankruptcy?

Answer 1

Technically the lawyer is responsible and it's called malpractice.  However it's very tough to prove and even if you proved it, the second thing you have to show is that you were "damaged" by his advice.  Cross-collateral is very tricky.  So let's say the lawyer told you about cross collateral.  You would have to give the car back.  He didn't tell you about cross collateral and you have to give the car back.  Either way, the result is the same - you have to give the car back, so his advice didn't hurt you.

If you're saying, well if he told me about cross-collateral, I would have kept the more expensive one, the cross-collateral would still have applied and you'd have to give the expensive car back either today or sometime down the road.....so again, his not telling you didn't really hurt you.

So.....you can pursue malpractice but you'd need to find and pay for an attorney to do this.  It would be very difficult and expensive and sounds like you need all the money you can get to buy a car.

There is something called a Motion to Redeem.  It's complicated but basically if the car you still have is worth $1000, rather than giving the car back, you can ask the judge to allow you to give the credit union $1000 and for them to consider all the other loans paid in full.  This is the very simplified explanation and you'd have to ask your attorney about it.