‘Real Housewives of New Jersey’ Bankruptcy Drama

June 26th, 2010 by Reed Allmand

‘Real Housewives of New Jersey’ star Teresa Giudice and her husband Joe have filed for bankruptcy.  The couple who live a lavish lifestyle on their Bravo network reality show, are in reality up to their necks in debt.  The couple filed for bankruptcy showing that the owed $10.85 million in debt. Bankruptcy documents reveal that while Teresa Giudice spends thousands of dollars on clothes on her reality show, she only earns $79,000 in income from Bravo and is already facing the lost two of her homes to foreclosure.  The Giudice family’s $1.8 million home in Towaco, NJ is also in the foreclosure process.  

The court papers show that the Giudices’ assets include $2.2 million in real estate — $1.7 million for the lavish Towaco home seen in the series, and the remainder for a small house in Lincoln Park and a beach house in Stafford. But all of the homes have mortgages — in the case of the small homes, several mortgages — which exceed the value of their homes…The Giudices also owe $6.1 million to various and sundry banks, credit card companies, utilities, law offices, and construction outfits, plus nearly $20,000 to Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus, and about $12,000 to an in vitro fertilization clinic..

According to the bankruptcy filing, Joe Giudice earns $3,250 a month as the owner of his stone and stucco company plus $10,000 a month which is basically coming from family financed loans.  The Giudice bankruptcy is a perfect example of what to not do if you want to avoid bankruptcy.  This couple obviously does not have a large amount of wealth; but they pretended to have it, and that fantasy has destroyed their finances.  They have also been denying the reality of their situation…this bankruptcy should have been filed a long time ago.  You don’t go nearly $11 million in debt overnight.