Couple moves back to town, aids others in need

Affordable Bankruptcy Services finds reward in helping

MOSES LAKE — Bankruptcy has been around since the time of the Bible.

So says Scott Kilpatrick, attorney and counselor-at-law with Affordable Bankruptcy Services.

"In the Old Testament, it was part of the law of Moses, and it was called the year of release," he explained. "We've had bankruptcy in this country since pre-Revolutionary America time, because all our laws came over from England, and a lot of the laws in England originated in the Bible."

Kilpatrick's point is that there's a lot of negative stigma connected to the notion of bankruptcies. He said he has probably been involved in over 10,000 bankruptcies in the past 21 years. Out of those, he said, less than 10 were people trying to beat the system who wanted to get out of paying their bills.

"All the rest of them are people that, if they had the ability to pay their debts, they would have," he said. "And they feel terrible when they can't pay people. It's an emotionally difficult time to go through."

Kilpatrick and wife Juanita opened Affordable Bankruptcy Services, located at 1227 E. Wheeler Road, "almost exactly" one year ago, when they moved back to the area.

Scott got his first job in town in 1983 upon graduating from law school, where he met and married Juanita, then accepted a position in Longview-Kelso in southwest Washington, where they lived for many years.

"Throughout the years, we kept coming back to Moses Lake to visit our family, and we missed it here," he said. "I reached a point in my career where the opportunity was right for us to relocate over to here, where we wanted to live, instead of waiting 20 more years until I'm retired, because this is where we wanted to end up."

Juanita said she does all the support work and office management in the Affordable Bankruptcy office. A third employee helps with typing and data input.

Scott said he has been doing bankruptcies for 21 years, starting in Moses Lake, working in the same office as Judge Evan Sperline. When Sperline was appointed to the bench, Kilpatrick took on the duties of bankruptcy attorney.

He continued upon moving away, representing debtors filing bankruptcy, creditors in bankruptcy proceedings and in 1993 became bankruptcy trustee for Centralia, Chehalis, Longview and Kelso. He retired from that in August 2002, he said.

"I found that I just really enjoyed representing the people that need to file bankruptcy the most," he said. "In my opinion, there's very few areas practicing law where at the end of the day, you feel like you really helped somebody. Doing bankruptcies for people, I get a lot of satisfaction out of that, because I do feel like it's a way that I can help people in some very serious financial difficulties."

Kilpatrick said he does what he can to help and counsel people through a rough time in their life. He tries his best to help those that don't have the resources, noting that in the past year, his office has given over 150 free consultations and met with a number of Hispanic people, with Juanita acting as translator.

"There's a real need for quality legal services in this area at minimum cost, because there are a lot of hard-working, underpaid people around here," he said. "And we've been blessed to be in a position to be able to try to help these people."

Juanita started helping Scott while in Kelso. Her organizational skills come in handy on the job, she said.

"We work really well together — people are surprised," she said. "They go, 'How can you work with your husband?' But it works out really good, and then when we get home, we never just talk about work things. We have other things, and we've been able to keep (them) separate."