A visit to attorneys' websites to study the merits of reopening a chapter 7 or 13 bankruptcy case will generally lead you to advice on how to reopen, along with a number to call for a free consultation. Attorneys can get from $250 to $1,000 for a standard filing that takes a few minutes and a single visit to court. Many attorneys will not tell you that you can "amend the schedules," or have the creditor added automatically to the existing creditor relief list.
If you have failed to list a creditor, you will need to consult an attorney in any case. If the same attorney is used to file for an amended schedule instead of reopening the case, that attorney is viewed as still working on the same case, not opening a new one. Many attorneys, according to a paper by Alexander Edgar, a U.S. trustee with the Department of Justice, are not even aware that a case need not be reopened in the case of a forgotten creditor.
Madaj vs. K. Madaj is a case where parents were unlisted as creditors in a bankruptcy case filed by their child in 1997, and the parents claimed that as unlisted creditors they were still due payment of debts; however, the court decided on behalf of the child. The essence of that decision was that once the court had declared the petitioner incapable of debt repayment, the issue of unlisted creditors did not require the case to be reappraised, since the debtor's status of insolvency was already determined. The unlisted creditors are automatically added to the no-pay list, or "schedule."
If, and when, you reopen a bankruptcy case, you will be required to refile a list of all your assets. If you receive new assets, such as an insurance settlement, a divorce settlement or an inheritance, within 180 days of the original discharge of the case, you are required to submit those assets to the court for administration. If, however, you receive these assets after 180 days of the original discharge, you are not required to submit the assets for administration, and your creditors will have no access to them. If you reopen the bankruptcy case, you will subject those new assets to court administration.