Help. Need advice

Hello kbr and welcome....hopefully someone else will post an answer also. You sound a bit like me...always had high credit score until my husband's business went under.....He held back and did not let me know how much debt we were in....I was just over 800 when we bought our house 8 years ago. Anyway, I thought I was going to do the chap 7 BK thing when I wondered in here because I was fearful of losing my home.....
so I had not paid on my ccs for about 120 days when I came here.......Read the posts related to settling and BK carefully....kept posting questions and now I have managed to settle all of my husband's personal and business accounts (huge debt) within one month.
I did not communicate with my creditors which I now sort of regret......However, I strongly advise you to change your contact info before you start down any road of BK or settlement. Change it to a cell phone that you do not use....so that you can monitor and take calls on that phone only and turn it off when you need to.
From what I know about settlement, the CCs will not work with you until you are about 90-120 days late....the longer you wait the better the settlement. However, if you wait too long on some cards, they may send your account to a CA or may opt to sue you. On citibank, we were in pre-litigation when I settled with them. So keep reading and asking questions. Come back and read somemore......
Again, I would probably talk with the CCs and explain your hardship....always keep your story the same .....(my story was true, but sometimes I would get so anxious I would babble on ....so just stick with what happened).....It is scary, but lots of us have had to do it.....so just do your best. There are also hardship programs which I chose to do for my debt (aside from my husbands).....
take care and come back