I need some advice fast and I’m hoping that you all can help. My husband and I currently have been in a lease purchase agreement with a couple for 2 years this past October. We have ~9,000 paid in toward the purchase of the house thus far. Today we received a letter in the mail notifying us that the couple we are leasing from have filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy in TN and have listed my husband and I as unsecured creditors. They are not answering their phone and their attorney says he can’t give us any other information than what we have already been provided with. Our lease purchase was up in October but they had agreed to give us another year (as stated under the agreement) Can any of you offer us any advice as to our rights or any information or experience that you might have? We can not get in to see our attorney until next week and I am just sick over this 
Please help!
If you have not already done so, IMMEDIATELY file a Notice of Memorandum of Lease with the County Recorder. This will cloud the title. If you don’t have one, just hit Google and type in “notice of memorandum of lease”. You’ll find a blank one.
You are NOT an “Unsecured” creditor, your $9,000 is an “equitable interest” in the property, especially if there is equity. Have they kept up the mortgage payments? Get in contact with the Bankruptcy Trustee and perhaps you can work out a deal with him.
Good luck.
Thank you so much for the wonderful and speedy advice. We are off to the courthouse this morning. They did finally answer the phone yesterday and tried to tell us that their bankruptcy will not affect our contract because they plan to tell the bank that they would like to keep the house and that they will continue to make the payments. They then told us not to worry because even if the bankruptcy goes through and they lose the house, the bank will want to sell it to us because we are already in it and that if they don’t they will refund the money due to us under the contract. (we had it written so that if we didn’t exercise the purchase option a portion of our money would be returned to us and that if they broke the contract for any reason all of the purchase money would be returned to us). We don’t really trust anything they are saying at this point and even if they give us something in writing I’m not sure how legal it would be. What a disaster! Thanks again and I’ll keep you posted.