shreddage, I know it will take some time to put together a proper case study, so I wanted to give you some ideas to immediately try to eke out a little bit of extra money, so that you can start trying to catch up. None of these are going to give you the thousands of dollars you need for the big picture, but they may help you get one bill or another up to date, or help you make the next rent payment on time, etc.
1. Food - often a huge budget item for a family. Resolve right now, no eating out. Now, go through your freezer and your cupboards and make a list of what meals you can make with just the food you have on hand. Stretch the expensive stuff out, and make something inexpensive the base of as many meals as you can. If you're like most of us, you have more food stashed away than you realize, and could probably go quite a long stretch without grocery shopping. Set aside a few dollars for staples like milk, bread and fresh fruit over the next 30 days, but otherwise, eat from your current stock and go to the grocery store only with those few dollars to spend. If you need to replenish anything, go to the cheapest store that price matches, and take the flyers from all the other local grocery stores. Find the cheapest prices on the largest sizes of the most basic staple foods. Oatmeal for breakfast. Big bag of potatoes. Dried lentils - easier and faster to cook than other kinds of dry beans. Rice. That kind of thing - healthy but cheap. Join us in the "Eat All the Food in Your House" thread in the Gauntlet section for help, ideas, and encouragement.
2. Phones and internet and ipad - do you have phones and internet at both your office and your home? Cancel accordingly, so that you only have them in one place. Your cell phone can be your business phone. You can use the internet at the office (and so can your family, if they need to). Or, if you spend very little time in the office, keep the internet at home and use mobile data at the office only when necessary. Move your data on your cell phone to the cheapest possible level, and keep your mobile data turned off except for the moment that you need to use it. I did that, and between wifi at work, and wifi at home, I use very little mobile data. Most providers will make you keep "a" data plan but will not hold you to it being the highest level plan. Better yet, you need to eliminate a good chunk of the monthly budget going to phones and ipad. This part might hurt - find out if you can give the ipad and some of the phones away, to someone who takes over the contract. I did that, a few years back, with a Samsung tablet I'd gotten. I didn't need it, or the $20 a month data plan, though it did hurt to just give it away! But it was no problem to have the rest of the plan transferred over to someone else, and they were happy to take the tablet (which was already partially paid for by that point) in exchange for shouldering that commitment. The service provider didn't care, as long as someone paid the bill! If you can stomach it, do the same with the kids' phones. Hard, I know, but so is getting evicted :-(
3. Insurance, gas, and tolls - I have no good suggestions about your car payments, or about selling the vehicles, and will leave that to others. But do a round of calls about your insurance and see if you can't find a better plan. Check if there are group discounts based on being an alumni of a certain institution, or member of a particular guild, etc. Raise your deductible, or lower your coverage, or ...? Ask them what you can do, to get the bill down. Many places have a multi-policy discount. I added (cheap!) contents insurance to my package, because I'm a renter too, and the small cost was more than compensated for by giving me a significant discount on my (expensive "new driver") car insurance! Also, just don't go anywhere, and if you must go somewhere, take the cheaper vehicle to drive - probably not the truck. Can your wife car pool, even part way? Do absolutely no unnecessary driving for the next several months, with a specific goal of cutting out X # of tanks of gas per month. Tolls should naturally go down as you cut back on your driving.
4. Look for a 0% interest balance transfer for your credit cards, if your credit hasn't gotten too bad to do so yet. That will let whatever payments you can afford to make, go toward the principle rather than interest. Or sit down with your bank to talk about a debt consolidation loan. Or, yes, talk to someone about bankruptcy, though again, other people on the forums will be able to tell you more about the pros and cons of that and whether it's something you should consider, once you share your other details with us. But you could still find out now what the bank would offer in terms of loan terms, which would be a helpful comparison point.
5. Utilities - you're renting, so maybe you don't pay any, but if you do (i.e. renting a house) then cut everything way back. Unplug anything that's not actively in use and keep lights out in any room you're not actually in. Turn down the thermostat - way down! (Not enough for the pipes to freeze!) Set a timer for your showers, and turn down the temp setting on your hot water heater. All of this will only move the needle a tick on your utility bills, but you need every penny you can get. $60 from a saved tank of gas, plus $10 less in utilities, plus $40 from cutting back data on your cell phones - that might be the minimum payment on one of your CC bills, right?
6. Office space - figure out if you could sublet it or share it, even if it doesn't completely cover your cost. There are some social work/psychology professionals in private practice who might love to rent space from you once a week. Same with lawyers just starting out, who need a safe place to meet with clients, but not a place to work from every day. I've known people in exactly those situations (a criminal defense attorney, a psychologist doing insurance-funded assessments and therapy, a social worker moving into a private counselling practice). You can charge them a small fee to have their mail come to you as well, and if this works out, could even set up phone lines for them, as long as you can recover the equipment and service costs. Look for message boards or local associations to get the word out that you're looking for renters.
Again, these are just a few budget trimming ideas to get you started. They won't get you all the way, but if you do all of them, you might free up enough money to inch toward climbing out of this mess. More ideas will come, but do something, right now, to get started. You can't let yourself stay frozen.