What do I list as my address if I lived overseas 3 years ago?
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Questions about your addresses on your bankruptcy forms are used to determine one of two things: 1. Which state you are eligible to file bankruptcy in and 2. Which state's exemptions you can use to protect your assets.
Written by Kristin Turner, Harvard Law Grad.
Updated July 22, 2020
Questions about your addresses on your bankruptcy forms are used to determine one of two things:
Which state you are eligible to file bankruptcy in and
Which state's exemptions you can use to protect your assets.
If you have lived in a state for at least 91 of the last 180 days, you will be eligible to file in that state. In this case, your overseas residency was more than one year ago, so you would not have to worry about it affecting where you can file.
Exemptions are a bit trickier. Typically you may use the exemptions of the state in which you lived for the majority of the time between 24-30 months ago. If you lived overseas during that time, you will need to use the exemptions of:
The state in which the majority of your assets were located during that time frame.
If you did not have assets in the US at that time, then you will use the exemptions for the state in which you lived for the majority of the six month period following your return to the US.