341 today, one step closer!

[woeisme]

Hi there. My husband and I filed September 19, 2007. We've made two payments to the trustee so far, and had our 341 meeting today. No creditors showed up, as expected. The questions were very straightforward. The only glitch was our lawyer didn't show up, but she sent someone in her place, but that guy got lost on his way to the city hall building so was 20 minutes late. The people at the 341 took it all in stride, just called a few people who were scheduled after us to go before us, and then when the lawyer's replacement showed, went to our case #.

I was really nervous about the 341. We had pretty high allowances for medical and gasoline expenses due to chronic health problems and my husband's commute to his job. They never even asked about them, to my surprise. The only thing the (trustee? clerk?) brought up was that some number on some line of some form needed an explaination next to the number, which the lawyer said he'd take care of, and they both said was just a procedural issue because it wouldn't affect the final calculations in any way. We also need to file a form for payroll deduction and our home appraisal, but the lawyer has the paperwork for both of those too, so said he didn't think there should be any problem with confirmation.

Does anyone know if the person who runs the 341 is the trustee, and the one who might object on the behalf of the creditors, or was he a clerk or something, and the actual trustee doesn't come into the picture until the confirmation hearing in January? I guess what i'm asking is do I still need to worry about the payment amount getting changed, or if the guy running the 341 didn't see a problem with what we filed, will it pretty much be confirmed? Thanks in advance for any replies!

[rrockinggramma]

It can be a shock to realize that the person running your 341 is an employee of the trustee. In my case, they were staff attorney's with a clerk sitting next to them taping the session and taking notes. Generally if your attorney gets those modifications in to them, then you should be ok. Confirmation is all about funding the plan and you apparently have enough to cover everything so probably no worries there too. I only met my trustee at my confirmation hearing and then only by accident. He walked into the room just as I was called up to see if his workers needed anything (water, juice, etc) LOLOLOLOL The trustee's staff does everything. He just oversee's.

[woeisme]

Thanks rockinggrandma! I did a little digging on the internet and found out that it was probably just employees of the trustee, and you are exactly right, they were tape recording our meeting for him (or her) to listen to later. I suppose the bankruptcy judge can still object at the confirmation, but seems like we are on the right path to getting this thing confirmed at any rate.

I've been expecting gobblins to jump out of the woods and grab me at any point in this process, and I don't suppose I'll ever feel like I should stop worrying for the whole 5 years, but every step has me thinking "this was absolutely the best course I could have taken for my financial future" while simultaneously thinking "I am so afraid of what the next step might bring"! Totally makes no sense to worry and be relieved at the same time, but that's where I'm at.

The attorney who did my paperwork signing (who was different than the initial one I met, and different than the one who showed up to the 341 today, really shouldn't have gone with such a big lawfirm!) was really great about finding wiggle room in the budget, so I am 100% confident we can do the plan as written, my big worry is that they'll see this wiggle room and up my payments (I'm paying 100% to secured and 65% to unsecured) until the budget is so tight that we don't make it through the 60 months.

[rrockinggramma]

you know, I doubt the trustee ever listens to those tapes unless a red flag is raised at the 341. Then they probably go back over the info provided to see what step to take next. Trustee's do hundreds of those 341's a month. They don't have time to nit pick each one. LOLOL Yes Our first law firm had several attorney's. Got a different one each time. In the firm I used first, one attorney did the initial, one did the paperwork, and one did the 341 and confirmation hearings. LOL I changed attorney's on my 3 rd time filing and like this one much better. It is still several attorney's but have the same one for all things. But you will be fine.