Kevin F. Carr

I have visited with Kevin Carr a few times now and have paid $370, which is the cost to file a Ch 13 bankruptcy. On my last visit, I had reluctantly paid the fee to get started even though it didn't feel right. I wish I would have listened to my gut and not paid him. In my last two visits, Kevin h...ad mentioned that he was friends with the attorney that had sued me and is now garnishing my wages, which I believe is a clear conflict of interest. After speaking with my pre paid legal service, I discussed the situation and was told that Kevin should have turned down the work and gotten a different referral attorney. During the last visit, I had provided much of the required documents needed to start filing, and we put together a budget which indicated that my payment would be nearly $1,800 a month, which is a bit more than my wage garnishment, which already prevents me from making ends meet for me and my family. I had raised this as a concern on my last visit, and he had shrugged it off as a non issue and told me to work on my budget, without really giving me any idea as to what can be included in it, or what I need to do to reduce that amount. I'm the sole earner in my household with one child, and paying $1,800 a month for the next five years would be unsustainable for my family and I. Over the course of 5 years, that would be over $100,000. At that rate I could work on settling with all of my creditors and skip the attorney and trustee fees. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this the last week, and as convenient as it would for me to tell him to just file it and be done with it, I can't. It doesn't feel right. He hasn't adequately answered my questions, and basically told me it is what it is. While I am not a lawyer or a bankruptcy expert, I do work in the mortgage industry and assist people with the largest and most complex financial transaction that most people will ever deal with. My clients may not like what I tell them sometimes, but I do make sure they understand the process, what's possible and what's not, and I give it to them straight. It's important to me that even if my clients are upset, scared, or just uneasy about the process, that I adequately address their concerns, and let them know the "why" behind what I have to tell them. Like a getting a mortgage, filing for bankruptcy is scary and there's a lot of uncertainty. Kevin hasn't done his due diligence to lift the curtain and make me feel comfortable enough to follow through with him as my attorney. The $370 I paid was for costs that would be incurred for the bankruptcy, which I was advised was $60 for the credit report (which was done) and $310 for cost to file, which wasn't. I asked that he return the $310 which wasn't used, and I was told no, as he already spent 3 hours working on it. It was framed to me that I was paying this money to cover actual costs, and wasn't advised to me that if I decided not to proceed with him, that he'd just keep the money. I too have taken deposits from my clients in a similar fashion. My clients pay $500 to cover their credit report and the cost of their appraisal as a handshake to do business. The difference is, that if my clients decide they feel more comfortable with another lender, and we haven't paid the appraiser, we refund what is left over after the cost of the credit report regardless of the amount of work my team and I put in to it (which I guarantee is a lot more work than Kevin did in 3 hours). Regardless of the work we put in, unless we close their loan, we only make money when there are actual services performed for our clients, and my clients get keys to their home. Just a word of advice, do not pay this man anything until you are 100% sure that this is who you want to work with for the next 3-5 years. Trust your gut, cause once you pay that fee you are never getting it back.