People often assume all Courts are the same. Although there are many Courts spread out through Southern California, not all of them are equal. For example, while there is a large area with a number of Courts in Van Nuys, none of them are actually bankruptcy Courts. If you are going to file bankruptcy, you must file specifically at the bankruptcy Court that it allocated to the zip code where you live.
In the Central District of California, (yes, this is technically the name of the district even though we are in Southern California, geographically), there are five bankruptcy Courts. There is one in Santa Barbara (which services Ventura County), Woodland Hills (serving the San Fernando Valley), Downtown Los Angeles (serving everyone else in LA), Riverside (serving Riverside County), and finally Santa Ana (serving Orange County).
Please note that you can not simply file your bankruptcy where it’s convenient for you. For example, let’s say you work in Woodland Hills, but you live in Simi Valley. You could NOT file your personal bankruptcy case at the Woodland Hills Court simply because you work close by since technically the Simi Valley zip codes are allocated to the Santa Barbara Court. Unfortunately in some cases, this results in a bizarre situation wherein you would have to drive much further to file your case, even though you may live much closer to Woodland Hills.
So how can you be sure where to file your bankruptcy case? To be safe, the Bankruptcy Court has created a “zip search” in which you can input the zip code of where you live, and it will tell you where you are required to file your bankruptcy case. Here it is:
CLICK HERE FOR THE BANKRUPTCY COURT ZIP SEARCH
So there you have it! Not that hard after all, is it? When in doubt, call us for your free bankruptcy pre-qualification to see if you qualify for either Chapter 7 or 13. It’s always beneficial to hire an experienced bankruptcy professional (ie. me) to handle your case and avoid any mistakes or costly errors.
