Bankruptcy Court Information For Stafford County, VA

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What's all this about "CM/ECF"?

If you visit any bankruptcy court website, you will see prominent notices about mandatory "CM/ECF" which stands for "Case Management/Electronic Case Files." If you are representing yourself (filing without a lawyer), don't worry about this -- it applies only to lawyers (although most sites fail to mention that important fact).

If you're a lawyer, you must file your client's bankruptcy forms electronically and receive training on how to do it. Electronic filing simply means filing your forms as PDF (Acrobat) files via the internet or CD-ROM. Creating PDF files does not require special software. Any software that can print can also produce PDF files with the proper software add-ons. There are some specialized attorneys' bankruptcy software that will produce PDFs from data you enter.

Most downloadable official forms these days are PDFs with fillable fields and most computers can "print" a filled-in form to a PDF file. (See the Free Bankruptcy Forms page for more info)

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Courts that offer "eSR" - Electronic Self Representation

See below for our list of courts that allow debtors to electroncially file.

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Dealing with "legalese"

Bankruptcy court websites have come a long way towards plain English?

Courts should serve all taxpayers, not just lawyers. Filing requirements should be clear and accessible to everyone. After all, everyone must follow the law, so why not make the rules clear and in plain English?

Unfortunately, not all courts provide clear, simple instructions for filing bankruptcy forms. It takes some effort to translate legalese into plain English, and some courts just don't bother.

However, some courts do an admirable job of providing information to help non-attorneys find relevant information. They lay out clear timelines of essential procedures and explain requirements in a clear, easy to follow manner.

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Courts That Do a Good Job Of Helping Debtors Who Don't Have An Attorney

In our first review of 90 bankruptcy court websites nationwide in 2007, LegalConsumer.com found only a handful court websites that provided clear, well-organized filing information for those who don't speak legalese.

A few courts, however, showed what could be done if all courts would bother to take the time to help the general public, and so we created a "Hall of Fame" of good government, to show what could be done by a court with taxpayer's money and a little extra effort, organizaion, and plain English. All bankruptcy courts should follow their example.

In subsequent reviews, many court websites showed significant improvement from 2007 to 2009.

However, as of August 2022, although in general court websites are much better, there is still a wide gap between the best and worst ones when it comes to serving the unrepresented debtor.

If your court's website isn't helpful, check out one of these sites....

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Bankruptcy courts that do a good job of explaining procedures to non-lawyers and / or offer eSR (electronic Self Representation)

Here are the best of the best. Court websites can and do change -- hopefully for the better, but not always.

Note: Links go directly to the court's info for non-lawyers, rather than the court home page.

Note: As you will see if you look at several of these, most of the information you find is general and applies regardless of which court you're filing in.

However, some procedures are "local" and deadlines and forms can vary from court to court.

Always confirm that you are complying with your own court's local rules and procedures.