That's true in my friend Ian's case. For most of his life (since age 21) he has been an owner-operator long-haul trucker, making a very good income.
He had a nice house in Indiana and paid all his bills on time.
Then, he went into stage 4 congestive heart failure. It apparently was caused by chemotherapy he took 16 years ago when he had cancer.
Well, the Indiana board of motor vehicles took away his CDL, and he basically lost everything. He lost his truck, and even though he has paid off most of his beautiful three-story house, he stands to lose it.
He can't get disability. He was turned down even though his doctors at Margaret Mercy say he is in end-stage heart failure, and he ends up gasping for breath and sweating even after walking just a few yards.
He can't work anywhere where there are electric motors or computers, as he has a pacemaker/defibrillator, and as a result of all this, he is paying for everything with his credit cards, just food, medical bills and utilities, until his disabilty is finally approved.
He has to hire a lawyer at $20,000+ to get that disabilty, even though he's probably paid the federal government millions of dollars in taxes in the thirty years he's been a semi-truck driver.
I'm a conservative at heart, but when I hear cases like this, I do understand what the liberals talk about when they get all bleeding-heart about hard-luck cases like Ian's.
Ed
A heart-breaking story. As I've been saying, there are legitimate situations for bankruptcy and your friend's sounds like one.
But bankruptcy wouldn't even solve all his problems, although it almost certainly would allow him to keep his home. But this is where we used to depend on private charity to help our neighbors. Once that "job" got taken over by the government, the idea that we pulled together to help our neighbors became less compelling.
It also points out that people should consider disability insurance. Sure, not everyone can "afford" to be insured for every contingency, but then again this situation is terrible also.
I hope your friend gets a favorable decision on his disability request soon.