Women & Money: The Shit We Don't Talk About!
Women & Money: The Shit We Don't Talk About!
Debunking the Bankruptcy Myths with Adrienne Hines
Think bankruptcy means failure? Think again.
In this episode, we sit down with Adrienne Hines, a seasoned bankruptcy attorney and relatable straight-shooter who’s using TikTok to make financial freedom feel possible again.
Adrienne discusses how societal stigma and misinformation prevent people from seeing bankruptcy as a viable financial tool. The conversation covers the emotional burden of debt, different types of bankruptcy, and the myths surrounding bankruptcy's impact on a person's future. Adrienne explains that bankruptcy can significantly improve credit scores and financial stability within a short period after filing. The episode also touches on the role of medical debt in bankruptcies and Adrienne's efforts on social media to educate and empower people, particularly women, about debt relief options.
Adrienne also breaks down the legal process in everyday language and helps us see bankruptcy for what it really is: a second chance, not a moral failure.
04:45 Understanding Bankruptcy and Its Misconceptions
09:41 Types of Bankruptcy: Chapter 7 vs. Chapter 13
16:19 Debts in Bankruptcy: What Gets Paid Off?
24:03 Rebuilding Credit After Bankruptcy
24:48 Filing for Bankruptcy: Rules and Frequency
27:26 Empowering Women Through Financial Struggles
30:05 Medical Debt and Bankruptcy
32:55 Success Stories
36:14 The Importance of Financial Transparency
Adrienne’s message is clear: you are never stuck, you can move forward. Join us for Money Talks on July 31 and discover how to flip the script on old money narratives and take bold, grounded steps toward your next chapter. Click here to register for FREE and bring your questions!
Got a unique financial story to share? We want to hear it! Or are you a professional who helps women with money? If you’re a financial coach, attorney, CPA, or work in any area that empowers women financially, we’d love to hear from you too! Your story could inspire our community of women. Fill out our intake form here!
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[00:00:00]
Maggie: mom. Have you ever filed for bankruptcy?
Barb: No, never. Never ever.
Maggie: Why you say that? Like there's so much shame around it, girl.
Barb: Because there used to be, and every time I think of bankruptcy, I think it's such a negative thing and don't even assume I would do such a thing.
Maggie: Yeah, I think a lot of people carry that belief as it kind of just had that connotation of like, you're bad with money, you couldn't manage it. Now you got yourself into this hole and you should deal with it. There's so many people out there who I know are like, you should deal with it, instead of just filing for bankruptcy.
Little did they know, they didn't listen to our podcast.
Barb: I know it's pretty brilliant. All that we learned on our podcast about bankruptcy because it's not a negative thing, it's a strategy.
Maggie: It is a tool. A tool. They've been hiding from you because the man created it and the man doesn't wanna tell you about it. And we're here to talk about that shit [00:01:00] because that's what this podcast is all about.
Barb: Yes. So thank God we met Adrienne because she's unpacked for us everything you ever wanted to know about bankruptcy and how it's not a dirty word.
Maggie: I think we did kind of fly off the handles sometimes with the amount of questions we asked her, but I just like couldn't wait to get in because you hear so much in the news about businesses, about all these people filing for bankruptcy, yet you still see them out there. And so I was very confused. But then she enlightened all of us and learned that there are different types of bankruptcies. And what,
Barb: There's different types of bankruptcies.
Maggie: and they can really be a tool in your toolbox. It's not all bad.
Barb: Yeah. And it's interesting 'cause you had a really good question about how much money is bankruptcy for, is it 20 K or 200,000 k? And really her explanation, and I'm not gonna tell people what it was 'cause you have to listen, but it was brilliant and I just feel so enlightened about bankruptcy, and I think [00:02:00] there are many people out there, many women especially, that are inundated with a lot of debt that maybe
they had no part in. For instance, she said there's many reasons. There's seven reasons why people get into debt, and spending was like six or seven. It's not about people buying plush bags in fancy clothes. It's for the most part, when something happens to them that's out of their control, like they get in a bad car accident and suddenly they have a lot of medical bills or somebody gets sick or they have to leave work to take care of somebody else.
And suddenly they don't have a lot of income, so maybe they have to put things on a credit card debt. When life happens to you and it incurs a lot of debt and you're overwhelmed, and you're stressed almost to the point of depression, you need to think about filing for bankruptcy.
Maggie: yeah, she just has such good emotional connection of understanding how to come over this, how it can be helpful, and how we can really launch you forward. So I'm excited that we had her on 'cause I learned so much. And I'm ready to share this [00:03:00] with the rest of the community so they can use this tool to launch forward.
Barb: Yeah, and I kept thinking in my, the back of my mind, kinda like Oprah, you should file for bankruptcy and you should file for bankruptcy and you should file for bankruptcy. So bankruptcy, it's not a dirty word.
Maggie: Barb's not giving any advice on this show. And with that, let's dive in./
Gloria Steinem once said, we will never solve the feminization of power until we solve the masculinity of wealth. Barbara Provost and Maggie Nielsen are the team at purse strings that will help you navigate the ins and outs of financial independence so that you can be financially fearless. This is women in money, the shit we don't talk about.
Maggie: Adrienne, welcome to Women and Money, the shit we don't talk about. And today we are diving into [00:04:00] it. I am thrilled for this conversation around bankruptcy. But before we dive in and get started, could, would you be able to introduce yourself to the audience?
Adrienne: Absolutely. Thank you guys both for having me on the podcast and we've been looking forward to this. My name is Adrienne Hines and I'm a bankruptcy lawyer in northwest Ohio. I live in northwest Ohio with my husband and our son and our dog, and I pretty much, I have a regular, normal practice. I'm a bankruptcy attorney.
Have clients and a paralegal in office. But I also spend a lot of my time on social media trying to educate people about debt, about debt relief, about what options are really out there and what their safe and legal options are. So I'm a bankruptcy lawyer and an internet bankruptcy influencer. That's what I do.
Maggie: It's so fun. And I was reading, and we dove into this bit, but [00:05:00] I'm a big Reddit person and I love to read on there all these people who think they should or shouldn't file for bankruptcy and all the reasons because of course why not talk to a professional but just go out there on social media and ask and everyone else there knows.
So, Adrienne, you've been helping people with that for almost 30 years, so what made you want to be a bankruptcy lawyer in the first place? We don't come across a ton of people who are dying to get into bankruptcy.
Adrienne: Like, I can't even believe I'm a bankruptcy lawyer. I can't even believe I love doing this because it is fair to say I didn't always love this, and I certainly did not envision that this was going to be who I would end up being. I went to law school. My, my parents got divorced when I was very young and my mother remarried when I was a teenager, and she remarried a lawyer.
I had already decided in my mind that I was gonna be a lawyer someday because my second grade teacher told me I should either be a actress or a lawyer. And I figured lawyering. See, there are schools everywhere for [00:06:00] lawyers, and you had to go to a big, you had to go to LA to be an actress. So I thought, well, I can go to a school to be a lawyer, so that's what I'll do.
So I thought it was kismet when my mother married a lawyer and I hung on his every word, and I followed his footsteps and I went to the same undergraduate school. School that he went to. And I tried to go to the same law school, but they didn't quite let me in, so I had to go to a different one. But when I came outta law school, I went to work with my dad my stepfather, and I started doing workers' compensation.
So most people. Most of the colleagues that I've had over these last 30 years know me as a workers' compensation attorney. I was a specialist. And if you Google me, you'll see a lot of references to workers' comp. But what a lot of people in that field did not know about me is that I had interned with a federal bankruptcy judge when I was in law school.
And while I'd had no desire to do any bankruptcy work, he was a mentor to me and we stayed in contact. [00:07:00] And as my workers' compensation practice became more and more dangerous and scary the safety nets being pulled out from under people. My, my old mentor, my, the judge that I interned for asked me why I wasn't doing bankruptcy work myself.
I was always trying to find somebody to refer people to, and so he just sat me down one day and said that I needed to start doing this because I had such a tremendous need in my practice and I couldn't continue to rely on other people to do it. And so I quietly started a bankruptcy practice largely to help my own clients in their problems in a different area.
And I am an incredibly passionate person. I've come to learn. I'm an incredibly empathetic, passionate loyal defensive kind of person. I got very involved in politics for a period of time in my life, and that became very frustrating. So I took all that energy and I think I just started channeling it into helping.[00:08:00]
People who don't even know they need help. And I felt very safe in that space because I had already spent a lot of years, with men with injuries and kind of navigating complicated things, talking about depression and inability to work and those types of things. So I felt like I was already well seasoned to kind of trans transfer into this.
And over the years, it just truly became my passion. I love practicing bankruptcy law because I understand it and I know how valuable it can be for people, so I love sharing the word about it.
Barb: Who knew?
Adrienne: Who knew?
Barb: So glad that we met you because I think about. Bankruptcy and the negative connotations like bankruptcy. Oh, you're a low life. You filed for bankruptcy. Just all this terrible negative stuff about it. But then when I met you, you were like, no, this is not a bad thing.
This is not a negative thing. There's a lot of really [00:09:00] super cool things about bankruptcy and we wanna unpack that today. So we can't wait to dig in and learn more about it.
Adrienne: love it.
Maggie: So I know like, what was your first big lesson about how people really feel when they're drowning in debt? Because I've seen people who say, I'm $20,000 in debt. I think I should file for bankruptcy, and I'm $220,000 in debt and I think I should file for bankruptcy. So yeah. What's that kind of feeling that you recognized?
Adrienne: The feeling is the feeling that I recognize is hopelessness and complete chaos and fear. And it doesn't matter whether you have $20,000 in debt and credit cards and medical bills, and. Payday loans burned down $20,000 to a single mom who's working at Bob Evans, who's not receiving child support.
Feels the same as, $200,000 in debt would feel to somebody like me, right? So it's all [00:10:00] relative and relativity matters. What I understand is the shame and the fear that people bring to the table. I certainly recognize and do not discount the fact that we have been inundated over the years with with media and with the concept that bankruptcy is bad.
And I certainly put a lot of blame on the makers of Monopoly for this. Because they've led us to believe that filing bankruptcy is worse than going to jail. And what the reality is that bankruptcy, it's like going from a like a caterpillar to a butterfly, right?
It is an amazing tool, but we've been conditioned to think that it's bad. Even though it is widely used across the United States for businesses and corporations today as we sit, Rite Aid is in bankruptcy, and Johnson is in bankruptcy, and red [00:11:00] Lobster is in bankruptcy and we don't we don't. say to ourselves, they're horrible. They should be ashamed of themselves. They're just bad, horrible people. In fact, I just saw a press conference from the president a couple of days ago, and Johnson's products were behind him as if he was trying to show that their fabulous.
They're in bankruptcy right now.
And so what I know is that bankruptcy is a financial decision and you make this decision with numbers and rationality, but we've been conditioned and we've been told to make our, those decisions with our hearts, with our guilt. And that I think is what I really came to understand is that there's a propaganda out there that's being pushed.
By a big corporation by lending companies to make you think that bankruptcy is bad. When in fact, if it were so bad, we would not have Disney World [00:12:00] because Walt Disney filed for bankruptcy after his first company Laff-o-matic. Went down the tubes, right?
Maggie: Matic, you don't even know the
Adrienne: it was called and
laugh was spelled LAFF.
Laff-o-matic ,
but you don't know about that. You don't realize, well, Disney filed and his brother had to file for bankruptcy as a result of the, that failed business. You probably, most people don't realize Henry Ford filed for bankruptcy and HJ Hines had a bad tomato crop in the late 18 hundreds and had to file bankruptcy has been around for a really long time.
And it is how Americans actually get through a difficult time and get to the other side and build wealth. And if businesses do it, why aren't we doing it? Why aren't we accepting this as a legitimate, safe way to manage our debt? And that's really what I'm out here trying to do. So, yeah it's that feeling that's noticeable.
It's that. I would do anything but this if I could, but there I can't think of anything [00:13:00] better to do, and now this is my only option. So that's what I saw.
Barb: So, when I hear companies are in bankruptcy, I always think, how come they're still in business? Then I thought when you were in bankruptcy, it's like, oh. We're outta money. We're bankrupt. We can't pay all our debts, so we have to file for bankruptcy and close the doors, but they're, they don't, they just keep going in business.
So how does that work?
Adrienne: that works because there are actually two different types of bankruptcies. There's two different types of bankruptcies for people, and there's this almost the same two bankruptcies that are available for businesses. In fact, the first one is available to both. It's called the chapter seven.
Chapter seven bankruptcy is what you are thinking of. It's over. We're shutting the doors. I gotta get out from under this debt and run as fast as I can from this. This thing that's blowing up behind me, that's chapter seven. Most businesses don't [00:14:00] even do that. They don't even go through the effort.
They just shut their business down. But people do, individual people file the chapter seven. But what a lot of these businesses are doing I is, they file what's called a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which is a business reorganization. It's identical in concept to a chapter 13 bankruptcy, which is a personal reorganization.
So you can either. Go into a seven and just shut the doors. It's all gone. We owe more than any of this is worth. We gotta run for the hills, right? That's a chapter seven, whether you're a person or a company. But the reorganization is. Designed for higher income people who, individuals, people who have some money but just cannot meet all of their obligations.
It's very similar to a business bankruptcy. A business goes into bankruptcy to cancel some contracts. Red Lobster very [00:15:00] specifically is in bankruptcy because they had gotten into two all these bad deals with their rental spaces, with their real estate. So they had gotten into. Bad contracts, they went into bankruptcy to cancel those contracts and renegotiate a lot of these contracts for their space.
And so you don't realize that's bankruptcy can, for half of the people who file bankruptcy, they're filing a reorganization, which means that they're reorganizing the debt and they're gonna pay what they can afford to pay. But they're, as long as they follow the rules at the end of their, at the end of this bankruptcy plan, some of their debt's gonna go away because they've taken care of the most important stuff.
And that's really what a business is doing. And it's no different. In fact spirit Airlines went into bankruptcy last. Fall and they very quickly reorganized everything. They were able to ne negotiate and do stuff lightning fast, and they came out of bankruptcy and they're operating. I've got a Spirit credit card.
It never was interrupted. I've got my spirit [00:16:00] points, I still got those. Spirit is better because they went through this process and most people are better for going through it because of the tremendous inherent advantages.
Maggie: Interesting.
Is very interesting. And so, if we wanna kind of take that fear and that shame away and use it as kind of a financial strategy to rebuild can you kind of explain for like a person what that would kind of look like in a simple way for someone who's kind of scared and considering it, what kind of that rebuild would look like?
Adrienne: so again, these two separate bankruptcies, these two different types are really going to define what's available to most people.
Maggie: How do you decide, yeah, what type you would do for a person?
Adrienne: Yeah, that's a great question. So a chapter seven is the Easy Bankruptcy. It's what everybody would want to file if they could, because it means that you go into bankruptcy, you pay money to file it, and then within three or four months, all of your unsecured [00:17:00] debt is gone, discharged. You come outta the bankruptcy, you don't get to, you don't have to pay any more of it.
And you come out and it's gone. It's behind you and you get to move on with your life. And that happens about three to five months, depending on the court. Okay? A chapter 13, which is what people would file to reorganize a Chapter 13 is designed for people who do not qualify for chapter seven. In order to file a chapter seven, you have to have a household income that is below a certain threshold limit based on the number of people in your house.
The state that you live in. So there's an income requirement, you must be under it to file the easy Chapter seven bankruptcy. If I have clients who are over the income limit, then by definition we have to start talking to them about a chapter 13. Obviously chapter seven is what everybody would want.
People cry when they realize that, they might make too much money for a chapter seven. But a [00:18:00] chapter seven also has a second drawback, there's a second test. In addition to being below a certain income limit, to file the easy chapter seven, you have to do an asset analysis.
And this is where a lot of people think, oh, I'll lose my house, I'll lose my car if I file for bankruptcy in a chapter seven. Every state has exemptions. And those exemptions are wildly different from state to state, and that's the biggest problem. But every state has exemptions in the equity in your home, in the equity, in your car, in your household goods and furnishings in your business.
Your business implements. If you have a business. There's a whole list of bankruptcy exemptions for each and every state.
So, for example, in Ohio, our exemption for our home equity is nice and big. It's over $170,000 per person, so my husband and I could file a Chapter seven bankruptcy if our income was under the limit and we [00:19:00] could keep our house.
If it was worth up to $350,000 easily with no mortgage, we could just own it outright and file bankruptcy and get rid of 30,000 in credit card debt and keep our house. That's possible in Ohio, but our exemption is $170,000 in Ohio, but it's only $15,000 in Missouri. So if you're a single mom in Missouri and your house happens to have 40 or $50,000 in equity because the housing prices of, And you're under the limit. Your only option is going to be to try to file a chapter 13 to protect your home. So we file a 13 if your income is too high to file a seven or we file a 13. If in your state something would be at risk if you were to file a seven where you live, and those are really the two different reasons why you would file a 13 and that pretty much sums up sevens and thirteens.
Barb: [00:20:00] So when you talk about unsecured debt, let's talk about what actually gets paid off
when you file
bankruptcy. Yeah.
Adrienne: it is. There are really three types of debt and in my book you'll see I've got a little pyramid that I made. The pyramid, the debt pyramid at the very top, Ima just imagine a pyramid and the very top chunk of it is gonna be what I call priority debt. Priority debt is debt that is generally not gonna go away in bankruptcy, so the standards are.
Taxes, child support, alimony, student loans.
Maggie: student
loans are in there. That's
Adrienne: Student loans cannot are nondischargeable as a general rule in bankruptcy. And that's a big one. 'cause a lot of people ask about that. There are other things that are nondischargeable too. Like if you commit a crime, right? If you commit arson, if you burn down your neighbor's house you cannot bankrupt the responsibility that you have too.
Fix their house. Right. So it's an intentional
act. That's fair. I had my law, my old law partner called me yesterday and he said If somebody's [00:21:00] embezzled $500,000, they can file bankruptcy on that if they're in, if they're going to trial, right? I said, no, you cannot do that. You cannot do that.
Those are the things that don't go away there.
There are few things that don't go away. The big ones are taxes, child support, alimony, student loans. That's at the top of the pyramid. That middle of the pyramid. We're gonna cut our pyramid into three chunks. The middle part is what I call secured debt. Secured debt are car loans.
Mortgages, right? Your car loan is secured by the title to your car. Your mortgage is secured by the deed to your home. If you don't pay it, they can come and get it right. That ring from K Jewelers, right? If you're paying it on installments, if you don't pay it, they can come get it. That's secured. We'll get back to that.
Everything else is pretty much unsecured. Credit cards, medical bills, payday loans, personal loans, lawsuits, things that lead to judgments. As long as it's not [00:22:00] taxes, child support, alimony, student loans, right? Then it's probably gonna be dischargeable in bankruptcy. It's consumer lending industry and medical bills is really what it is.
Unsecured, unsecured lending and medical bills fall into that category.
Barb: So who picks up the debt?
Adrienne: That is a really good question. The companies that lent the money are the ones who pay for the debt. It's not you or me, it's not you or me. If Capital One is going to send $30,000 in credit card offers to a single mom who works at Bob Evans, that is a business model problem, and that is market correction when that mom has to file for bankruptcy.
I think a lot of people think that we all share the burden in this, and to the extent that we're talking about medical bills, yes, we do. Okay. [00:23:00] That's a different story, but that's also just a different story in America, right? When it comes to credit, it is Capital One. It is Discover. It is the payday lender whose prevailing rate right now is 391%.
3 91. And we, people don't understand that. And when you hear that,
of course they're thugs. And we used to have laws in place that wouldn't allow that. That used to be called loan sharking. So what happened to the laws? The laws were called USY laws. USY laws were designed to combat loan sharking with organized crime at the turn of the century.
Well, what did organized crime actually, or eventually turn into corporations? So really from the seventies on the corporations and lobbyists have removed those USY laws that used to protect us. They used to protect us and that's why people think about [00:24:00] bankruptcy so badly because it was a different thing before the seventies.
It was a different concept for a large part because up until that point we had USY laws that capped interest and protected us, and those are gone now. The lobbyists, the companies the Capital Ones, the discovers, they paid a lot of money to have those laws removed and the compounding interest
is the gain. So when you say who pays for that, we've already paid it ourselves over and over due to compounding interest. And that is really what I'm on a mission to explain to people. When you borrow $30 from your credit card and you spend the next two years paying it off, you've paid them back $30 and then some.
You're on the hook for the interest now, and now you're just trapped in a cycle that you cannot get out of. And bankruptcy helps you get out of that trapped cycle you find yourself in. These lenders didn't take a security interest. They didn't ask for your ring, they [00:25:00] didn't ask for your car, they didn't ask for something in return.
'cause their business model is high risk. High reward. That's who pays for it. I'm glad you asked because I think a lot of people think that bankruptcy is shameful 'cause somebody else is gonna pick up the tab and that is actually not the way that it works. And understanding that is so important to helping people get over that anxiety hump or that fear that shame in terms of finding some answers out.
Maggie: I can like feel your energy through this and I'm like getting pumped up about it. Like I can
just feel it
and how you're passionate about it. And it is a little like stick it to the man a little bit, it's always back on us not doing enough, not doing the shame where we're just trying to keep our head above water and these companies are not.
Allowing us to, and they have enough money to change legislation and to do all the things keep you down and to keep them high and same story over again.
And so before, we get back on track to some other questions. The other thing I did wanna ask is like, the perception I've always heard was, you file for [00:26:00] bankruptcy you're never owning a home again.
You're not getting a car again. You at least have to wait seven years for it to fall off your record. So good luck doing anything else that you wanna do.
Adrienne: Yeah, well, I,
Maggie: that's false.
Adrienne: it, well, it's false because if you've watched any of my videos, you would know that is false. And, that is, again, perpetuating these myths that bankruptcy is so bad. Here's the reality my clients. I say this almost in every single one of my videos.
My clients can and should be back to a 720 credit score within 12 to 24 months of filing a bankruptcy, filing a chapter seven. My clients can and do very regularly, almost every week. Definitely a couple of times a month, they buy a car the day after they file a bankruptcy. It's unique opportunity that most of them have.
My clients have access to revolving credit cards within four or five months. And then my clients can buy a house qualified to finance a [00:27:00] house in two to four years. So when people say you can't do anything, that's simply not true. It's categorically not true. And if you look at people like. Dave Ramsey, or notable people who have filed for bankruptcy and then rebuilt their lives into amazing things, the Walt Disney, right? I mean, these types of people are examples that filing bankruptcy is what allows you to get rid of your debt. I mean, you're getting, my clients are getting rid of 30, 40, 50, 60, a hundred thousand dollars of debt, and if we can
push you through and you can see that there's a light at the end of the tunnel. The reality is what are you gonna be able to do in two to four years if you don't file bankruptcy? What is your plan? How are you going to be materially in less debt than you are right now if you don't do something big and drastic?
My clients who come in who have higher income, decent income and [00:28:00] who start working on their credit immediately, their credit scores can and do get back up to over 700 within six months. That's not something I say is you know, I don't wanna make everyone think that's possible, but 12 to 24 months is definitely doable and should be done.
Maggie: Wow,
Barb: So I have a question. How many times can people file for bankruptcy?
Adrienne: Yeah. I mean, it's every eight years is a chapter seven. You can file a chapter 13, four years after you've filed a chapter seven. There's a lot of different rules, but it's not the number of times in your life. It's the number of years between, and does your finances fit into this?
Square peg today. That's how it is. It's not an emotional decision. It's a where are my finances at and is this a reasonable option for me at this point?
Maggie: And so I know you've taken your advice to TikTok because clearly this information needs to be shared, why did you personally decide to go online and like, what's the response you've been getting from women out there?
Adrienne: Yeah. So [00:29:00] like so many other people. I had children who were high school seniors when COVID came around and when COVID happened, my kids were very prolifically on TikTok and,
Maggie: Were they teaching you the dances?
Adrienne: , I wanted to do these dances more than they did. I got a little bit more into it than them, but a funny thing happened the right when COVID started I woke up in the middle of the night
was sweating and I was not feeling well and I thought I was dying of cancer because, it was COVID and you couldn't go to the doctor. And turns out I was going through menopause. I was starting my menopause journey. I. But what happened after that, I've got it blown out straight today, but my hair went from pretty straight to very curly.
And a lot of my photos, a lot of my videos, you can see my really curly hair. I went to TikTok to figure out how to handle newly curly hair because I didn't know, I didn't know how to make it cute. And that's what took me to TikTok. While I was there, I started looking around I saw [00:30:00] the difference with TikTok versus Instagram, how Instagram seemed real glossy and fancy, but TikTok seemed more gritty and real, and I thought.
I think I like it in the gritty real place, and I kept looking around and then one day I just started talking about what I was doing. I started putting up videos about running and juicing and all the simple little things. I think that we start with when we're playing around with social media, I. And one day I just happened to mention what I do and a video just went viral.
And I realized in that moment that I had a lot of information to give about something that nobody else was really talking about. And it was an aha moment for me.
Maggie: And so what has your response from women like? Been out there, just all over it.
Adrienne: clearly my personality is very very in tune to communicating with people who are emotional. Who come from an emotional place. I'm very empathetic and so I [00:31:00] understand the fear, the deep fear that people have, but I also understand what it's like to be at home and to have a bill in your hand and not quite know what to do with it.
And to know you have all these other obligations and maybe your husband knows about it, maybe he doesn't. And maybe you're trying to figure out how to get out from under this, how to not damage your marriage, how to not embarrass yourself. And those things just kind of all spiral up on themselves.
I know that when I know that women internalize this debt and they bear a lot of responsibility in the family for trying to make ends meet right this way and that way. Men have tremendous concerns too, but women it affects us emotionally. It affects our relationships with our children and affects our ability to see ourselves as strong and powerful.
And so, I want to empower women to take care of their problems. Push through the fear and the anxiety. Be strong. This is your [00:32:00] opportunity to be strong and do something very brave for your family. And so that's, I think, kind of how people respond to that. And I just really enjoy helping women and people in marginalized groups because we are the ones who will suffer the most in an economic crisis.
Men rise to the top. They've got their own problems. But women have unique problems in this lane from the emotional standpoint and the responsibilities they have in the home.
Barb: It
is so interesting because all the people that you mentioned who filed for bankruptcy were all men.
And I think women have, this kind of underlying, for men it's a business strategy for women, it's I failed, I did something wrong. It's shame. You know what I mean? But women bear the brunt of so much financially raring children, taking care of those who are sick in our family, and, it's stressful.
It's very stressful. So I love that you're there for them. I love that they know that you're out [00:33:00] there and we can't wait to promote that you are out there as well. If they have questions like this, what do I do? Like, just the fact that you said 20 K is a lot different to a waitress than it is to somebody else.
I've been there. It's huge. It's huge. And I can only imagine. Can you speak a little bit to medical bills, because I think that was something you mentioned. Is that also something that gets paid off when you file for bankruptcy?
Adrienne: Yeah. If you are eligible for a Chapter seven bankruptcy, I just wanna make sure you understand that. You don't pay anything. It just gets discharged. It goes away. Nobody pays it. They take a loss on their taxes. Medical debt is the number one reason for filing for bankruptcy in America.
In America, we do not have safe, affordable access to healthcare. We just simply don't have it for that reason. Bankruptcy laws will never go away in America. They won't go away because of medical bills, and they won't go away because of their because of the [00:34:00] need to be able to start businesses. In America, right?
So medical bills are terrible, they're overwhelming. And I live in the shadow of the Cleveland Clinic, right? Cleveland Clinic's only an hour away. They saved my mother's life. They also charge a lot of money. And they just came out with a new decision, a new rule starting June 1st.
You cannot be seen in the clinic for non-emergency service without paying your copay. And that alone is gonna be a real problem for a lot of people because a lot of people, they just don't have the money for that. And so when people say, oh, they can get medical treatment for free, it's all subsidized.
You can get emergency medical treatment if you are bleeding out and go to a hospital, but you don't get the follow-up care, you don't get the physical therapy or the cardiac follow up or the MRI or any of that stuff and [00:35:00] follow up. And people don't understand that. So medical debt is a tremendous
problem in America, even people who have health insurance are overwhelmed with medical bills. I say a lot of the time, debt oftentimes happens to us. It happens to us and therefore we need to be open and ready for all of the ways to manage it. Because we gotta put that in motion aside.
It's not your fault that you had to be life flighted to the Cleveland Clinic. You didn't consent to it. You didn't sign the contract that said, I'm gonna charge you $90,000 to fly you there. It's just not possible.
Maggie: there's no way to heal if you just have this huge debt carried over you. And it's so hard 'cause it's like, as we know, a stage one cancer is easier to beat than a stage four. 'cause you caught it early, but if you didn't get in early, then you're paying for it and
all the things. So i'm glad that's part of it, and I'm glad we had this discussion, but let's turn a little positive.
Can you tell us, about a woman who you've helped, who's come out feeling just strong again and [00:36:00] really just, that the opportunity's there because they went through this transformation.
Adrienne: I have helped so many women that it's hard for me to think about any one individual person. I just got a message on TikTok yesterday from a lady. I check all my messages. I turned it into a video because it was just so beautiful. But I have helped a lot of women very specifically.
I started a podcast not too long ago with a friend of mine who was my bankruptcy client. That's how I met her, my podcast partner. We talk about being a moms and family and the different lifestyle that I have as a lawyer versus she as somebody who's a homesteader, right? We have different financial groups.
But she came to me through TikTok. She found me through TikTok. She made an appointment to talk to me 'cause she doesn't live far. And I ended up filing for bankruptcy for her and I became friends with her along the way and I was really able to get down into, what it was [00:37:00] really like for her.
So we talk about that a lot. We do videos together a lot. And what I know is that it changed the trajectory of their life. It changed their life. And I know that if we hadn't filed a year ago, I know what their life would be looking like right now today. And her husband didn't wanna do it, and then she kind of got cold feet, and I'm not really in the business of talking people into filing, but she'd become my friend.
So I started to bug her. I was like, you've gotta do this, you gotta do this. And so. I watched her go through the ups and downs, even though I'm a bankruptcy lawyer and I was wrapping my arms around her, like as a friend and texting her and calling, becoming actual friends with her, and she was still having trouble. Trusting me, but once she did, everything changed her. Her relationship with her children has changed. Her relationship with her spouse has changed. Her relationship with her family has changed. She was very [00:38:00] concerned about her family knowing. And then after she filed it, and finally she's like, I'm doing a podcast and talking about it.
She had people popped out like, oh, I filed, oh, did you know your dad filed? Like, all of a sudden we're like, okay. So I just, it was a very poignant step-by-step acknowledgement of how difficult it is for people to do this, but also how common it is. So everybody thinks that, oh, everyone's gonna find out.
The reality is people, have already filed. I know, 'cause I filed for, I live in a small community wherever I'm at, I see people, whether I'm at the grocery store or at a restaurant or at the fancy club I belong to, I've seen people I've filed bankruptcy for at all these places.
'cause bankruptcy is supposed to turn your life around and get you back on track.
Barb: it's like being
in the closet in the bankruptcy
Adrienne: It's like being in the debt closet. Oh, I'm writing that down. Oh. Come out of the debt closet. Maybe do some, oops, I'm [00:39:00] sorry. Do some rainbows and stuff. I don't know. I love it.
Maggie: All these topics we've talked about with money, it's always so interesting is everyone feels so alone and so shameful. I mean on, divorce, on budgeting, on just money mindset, I mean, any of these things. And then once you open up and talk about it, all the hands go up. Yep. Me. Yep, me. I relate.
I've done it. And that's why we want, to talk about this shit is because you're not the only one, listening who's ever felt this way, going through this thing, thought about it, had shame about it, wanna do it, all this. Stuff. So it's like, let's get the right resources, let's talk about it.
Let's bring it out of the closet and shine some light on it because it's not foreign, it is fine. Let's do it.
Adrienne: That's exactly the point. The very first line in my book is, shame lives in darkness and Shame lives in darkness. And the problem is that when we are embarrassed or shameful about something, we won't talk about it. That smell, we won't talk about it. We don't want to talk about it, but not talking about it is what puts us [00:40:00] in a position where we don't have the information we actually need in order to make the right choices. So in order to deal with that smell, whatever it is, we're gonna have to talk about it so we can fix it.
It has to be taken care of. We cannot keep ignoring it. It's not gonna make it better ignoring, it's not gonna make it better. And surprisingly, maybe not surprisingly, the moment people get it out of their mouths, they feel better.
Whenever I'm talking to somebody, you can just tell they're hamming and hawing.
Well, I didn't, and I'm a good person. I tried. I stop them. I say, stop. It doesn't matter how you got here. Just tell me the number. How much do you owe? It's the hardest thing for them to do. It flies outta their mouth. The best number that they can come up with. 40,000, 22,075,000 doesn't matter.
Now it's out. Let's start talking about how we fix this. Let's go through the reality and every [00:41:00] single time. They feel better just by saying it. And they were so anxious. It's like stepping on the scale. When you go to the doctor, nobody wants to do it, but if you go into the doctor saying, today is the day I'm gonna do something about this.
Get on that scale. And when you get off, you have a different feeling, you're like, I'm ready now. I'm ready. I wanna talk to the dietician, I wanna talk about that with gov stuff whatever you wanna do, you're allowed to do it. But the point is you've gotta step on the scale and look somebody in the eye and say, this is the problem I'm dealing with.
And I think that's the hardest thing for most people.
Maggie: we say so often, know your numbers and that we act like that's a hard thing or, people act like of course. And it's like, that's the hardest part though, is knowing where you're starting getting that first number, whether it's your weight or your income, or your spending or whatever it is.
Like people just don't wanna look at it. And so we're always like, know your numbers. Yeah. No know them. Know what it is and say it out loud. Share it with someone you know, actually [00:42:00] know the number.
Adrienne: I gotta be honest with you and tell you that, I think one of the reasons why I love this area of law and why I get it, is because I'm very messy. I'm not your normal bankruptcy lawyer. I'm a trial attorney and I fly by the seat of my pants and I can talk my way out of a paper bag, but I'm not the most detail oriented person in the world.
I'm very messy in my own finances. We all know it. My husband acknowledges it. I talk about it a lot. I don't always look at the numbers. I don't like to do things like that. I get anxious, when there's more bills than there is money. I get that feeling and I know. What it's like to not have the resources there in, in those situations.
I know how guilty I feel. I know how I say to myself, if I just paid closer attention, I wouldn't have made that mistake and let my insurance lapse. Like, those are the type of stuff I do. But I know how [00:43:00] hard that is and I know how embarrassing and shameful it can feel, and I know how important it is to be able to say it out loud.
Barb: Mm-hmm.
Yeah, we're all human. We all do it. We all do it.
Adrienne: Yeah.
Maggie: So Adrienne we like to wrap up every episode with the same question to all our guests, and that is what is your own definition of financial freedom?
Adrienne: Yeah. So, there's really no question I've had a tremendous amount of life changes in the last couple of years. My husband was in a near fatal plane crash. And because of that, I chose, I decided to leave my position as a partner in a law firm with my dad after 27 years and then just 30 days after I left my job we lost our 22-year-old daughter last summer and in a unexpectedly.
And so I say these things because I have thought about this a lot before. My husband's plane crash two [00:44:00] years ago. I would've thought that financial freedom, financial independence look like something else. But I know very seriously in my core that financial freedom is the ability to know that your basics are taken care of, and to know that you have safety in where you're at.
Financial freedom to me does not mean having lots of money. It means knowing that I've got exactly what I need in order to do the things that I want to do. If I hadn't left my job, I would not have been able to grieve for my daughter. And so financial freedom in that moment was not having to work. It was being able to just cry all day and know that I could still pay the bills. That was financial independence and financial freedom to me in that moment. And it stays with me. My husband and I had this discussion after the plane crash. How much is [00:45:00] enough? Like, how much do we really need?
And it turned out financial freedom for me. Was my husband saying it's okay to walk away. We've got this. So just lowering your expectations, and being able to exist comfortably with what you have. That to me is financial freedom and it's a tremendously comforting feeling.
Maggie: Wow, that's impactful. That was great. And so let's share a little bit. I would love to hear, I know your book just released, so I want to know where to find you on TikTok, where to find your book. Of course, all the things will be in the show notes, but we wanna hear it from the horse's mouth.
Adrienne: Yes, you can find me on all the socials, on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, tiktoks. My main that's where I got all most of my catalog of stuff. I am the Ladylike lawyer at the Ladylike Lawyer.
[00:46:00]
Maggie: Awesome. This has been great Adrienne. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your expertise. So we encourage everyone to, share this podcast with a friend, reach out to Adrienne, give her a follow, grab the book. And let's take the shame outta this bankruptcy and really use it for the tool that it is.
Barb: [00:47:00] Beautiful.
Maggie: Mic drop. All right, we'll talk
to everyone again soon.
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