Many of our clients would prefer not to include medical bills owed to their family doctor when they file. There are a variety of reasons a person may not want to include a debt. Usually it is the clients’ family doctor or dentist.
Contrary to what creditors think, most bankruptcy filers want to pay their debts, they just do not have the ability to do so. When we start drafting the pleadings, our clients can see that once all the rest of their debts are gone, they may be able to pay their medical bills.
However, when you sign your bankruptcy pleadings, one of the pleadings you sign is called “Verification of Creditor Matrix.” It simply says, “The above-named Debtor hereby verifies that the attached list of creditors is true and correct to the best of his/her knowledge.”
Nonetheless, we often have clients request to omit certain debts from their pleadings, most commonly debts owed to their family medical practitioners. Nevertheless this is not allowed. When you sign your name to the Verification of the Creditor Matrix, you are swearing under penalty of perjury that you have included all of your creditors.
Clients who are inclined to want to pay their medical bills are usually worried that they won’t be able to continue receiving medical care from the medical providers that they filed bankruptcy on. This is not the case for a myriad of reasons, one of them being ethical.
If you are in the middle of intensive care and your medical provider decides to discontinue your care, this could be considered abandonment. Because of this, most doctors would prefer to let the past go, start fresh and continue caring for your medical needs.
Most medical providers are savvy business owners and knew long before they ever began treating you that medical bills are often included in bankruptcies. When medical bills are what they are, medical providers understand that some of the debts owed to them are not going to be collected. Usually a doctor does not do his own billing, especially with larger medical facilities.
Most of the time, your doctor will never even know that you filed bankruptcy although the Court sent them a notice of your filing. Those notices are handled in their business or billing departments. Office managers handle these affairs so the doctors can focus on medical care. To learn more about voluntarily paying on medical bills owed to your doctor read Filing Bankruptcy On My Family Doctor Pt. 2.
