If Chapter 7 strengthens your hand against your secured creditors, Chapter 13 turns you into Superman. It starts with a much more robust "automatic stay."
It's often the combination of tools that come with Chapter 13 that allows you to keep your home. Because Chapter 7 has only some of these tools, sometimes it can't do nearly as much for your home as Chapter 13 can.
A mere list of the many ways that Chapter 13 can help save a home can start sounding dry. So here's a powerful example that shows off some of its extraordinary advantages.
Chapter 13 is often the best option for holding onto your home. That may be simply because it solves one of your major home debt problems, or instead because it solves a bunch of them all in one package.
Although Chapter 13 is often the go-to prescription for hanging onto a home in financial distress, like most strong medicine it comes with side-effects. The simpler Chapter 7 "straight bankruptcy" may be the better solution for both short-term relief and long-term financial health.
Here are the other 5 powerful home-saving tools. Chapter 13 isn't for everyone. But these tools, especially in combination, can often give you what you need to tackle and defeat your mortgage and other home-debt problems.