Most of the time in Chapter 7 Bankruptcies, they are over 90% of no asset cases.  What that means is that there are a lot of exemptions, and they are either under the state or federal exemptions, which basically allows people to keep the variety of property that they have.  In Massachusetts, it has some exemptions and that the federal exemptions, generally for most people, it would allow them to keep a residence exemption; there are also cars exemptions.

          They can be tricky though, you need to make sure that whoever you have with the Bankruptcy is able to go over the exemptions to protect them as much as possible.  One of the things that have to be looked at carefully; is the valuing of property and it also means that even if you are able to keep the property; particularly a secured property, you still would have to pay that off.  So certainly you would not get off the car loan that you owed if you wanted to keep the car.  You can let the car go or you can keep it, but you would have to keep the loan. Same thing with a house, in general, if you wanted to keep the house you still have to pay the mortgage payments on the house.