A petition is filed with the bankruptcy court to start the Chapter 7 bankruptcy procedure. In California, you must file your petition in the district where you’ve lived for the majority of the last 180 days or where you have a domicile, place of business, or principal assets. An automatic stay is put into place once your petition is filed, stopping the majority of your creditors from trying to collect from you.

About 30 to 45 days after filing, you will have a meeting of creditors. This is an informal meeting before a court appointed trustee. During the meeting the trustee will ask you questions about things like your assets and liabilities. He or she will be looking to make sure you have done everything procedurally correct and will be looking for unprotected assets that can be liquidated and distributed to your creditors. Creditors are allowed to appear at this meeting to ask you questions but do not do so in the majority of cases.

If there are no issues, the entire process from start to finish generally takes about four to five months.