Debtors exam

[DYLAN150]

Do they just send you a form to fill out or do you actually have to go to court to answer their questions. What kind of paperwork do they request?

[HHM]

Are you talking about a post judgment debtor's exam.

That is, you have been sued, plaintiff received a judgement against you, and now plaintiff wants to do an interview to determine what assets can be taken.

Many times, the plaintiff attorney will simply send a list of questions (Post Judgment Interrogatories) that you must complete and send back by a certain date. If you do not respond, then the plaintiff can seek to hold you in contempt of court and have a warrant issued.

The form will give you instructions, it is really up to the plaintiff's attorney if he wants to do this by a questionnaire, in person, at the courthouse, etc.

[DYLAN150]

I am wondering that after reviewing my budget and debts that i owe, may a judge order me to pay the creditor if he or she believes I have enough money left over each month to pay them. Or is this exam just to find assets that they may take.

[HHM]

The exam is simply to find assets, where you bank, and find out where you work so they can issue a garnishment.

If you are at this stage of the case, time to start thinking of your end-game solution...are you filing BK?

[DYLAN150]

HHM: Thanks for asking that: I don't really don't no yet. I am in a 100 percent payback of $2100 per month for 60 months should I file. All of my income can't be garnished, my car is a lease and my only home falls under the homestead act here in Washington state. I really don't have much house equity anymore the way the market is going. I don't own any time shares, boats, motorycyles, snowmobiles, coin collections, RV's or anything like that. I am in poor health in my 60's so It's a hard decision to make. I got myself in this position.

[AngelinaCat]

Are you possibly asking about a 2004(b) Debtor's Exam?

From what HHM wrote, there are apparently many different types of exams.

For us, we--'Hub and I, got treated to a Rule 2004(b) Debtor's Exam, because we sold a mortgage note that we held, too close to the date we filed BK. Even though we had a BK attorney, we had very little guidance from this person and made many stupid mistakes along the way. This was one of them.

We had to account for every penny we spent of the proceeds we got from the sale of the mortgage note. We got all this material together and had to go into our trustee's lawyer's office to answer--under oath and recorded--specific questions about this note. We had all this paperwork and also the correspondence--or the lack of satisfactory correspondence between ourselves and the attorney with us and tried to show how ill-prepared our attorney had made us.

They would have none of that.

We had to answer specifically the question of how we had spent the money. That is when our preferential insider payments came to light. We had NOT tried to hide them; the attorney just said when she finally did answer our questions--"you don't have the mortgage note anymore? You don't need to worry about it."

How wrong we found out THAT was. That is why we stay here trying to help people not make the mistakes we did.

I hope this helps!

[DYLAN150]

Cat: Thank you for your answer but I was referring to after an judgement is entered against me and they try to collect on it. I have noticed that some people are just mailed questions to answer and other people must appear in court to answer questions.