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I do the same thing, and the one time I had a medical emergency (pneumonia), I got hit with a bill for $40,000 from the hospital, plus a few more thousand from random other medical entities. I went "lolno" and spent months applying for financial aid and negotiating with the billers, letting them know upfront that my BATNA was to declare bankruptcy (in which case I would have transferred all my money to my mother's bank account first so it could not be seized; she did the same thing with my bank account the time she declared bankruptcy). In the end, I only paid out a couple thousand dollars. feelsgood.jpg
Your mother successfully hid money from bankruptcy? That’s great, why wasn’t it found just by looking at her statements showing the transfer?
She withdrew the money and closed her account, then deposited it in my account. It was only a few thousand dollars, anyway.
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Often creditors won't even bother to show up for the bankruptcy hearing and it just gets rubber-stamped. Eg. if someone has $50k in debt split across five different credit cards, it's just not worth a lawyer's time to try to squeeze a few thousand dollars out of the person of which the creditor would only get a fifth.
Depending on the state there are also a bunch of exemptions. For example Alex Jones got to keep his multi-million dollar house under the Texas exemption for a primary residence, despite having an outstanding judgement of over a billion dollars.
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There's a time window for money and property transfers that count. Typically 2 years. Transfer, wait 2 years or more depending on jurisdiction, declare bankruptcy.
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It appears that bankruptcy fraud is a crime (1 2) punishable by a sentence of up to five years in prison. (The federal Sentencing Guidelines prescribe a minimum offense level of 10 for fraud of up to 15 k$ (base 6 for fraud, plus 2 for loss up to 15 k$, plus 2 for bankruptcy fraud). This corresponds to an actual sentence of 6 to 12 months for an offender with no criminal history.)
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