Seesaw Payment Increase + Lawyer Fees = How will we pay the Total Amount?

[imtryingtho]

I’m sorry it’s been such a nightmare for you! I think this is what everyone worries about when entering Chapter 13. 😢 I can’t even believe they wanted to redo all the paperwork for a 5% raise!

[Barbisi]

Thank you both for your supportive comments!
Carmella, I know you guys have had a super tough time paying back 100%! But at least as you said, they can't ever raise your payment. And I'm glad you understand how worthless a solar panel lease is and that you will never fall for a glib salesman's pitch about how much you will save, how low the payments on a lease are,etc. (evidently the sellers of our current house fell for some similar line and passed on their mistake to us in the sale!)
Imtryingtho, I think the entire raise they were going after was four combined , from his hire date (Jan. 2019) to his first market retention increase (Sept. 2019), his first actual performance raise (Feb. 2020) and this poorly timed second market increase (Sept.2020) which was the five percent I mentioned above .... All in all,these increases amount to 25% pretax gross. Of course after COL, tax burden increases, and a whopping 75% increase in insurance premiums and higher medical deductibles, the new take home is significantly less.
Of course we will pay the higher amount required and hope we don't get a March 2022 surprise where the trustee refuses to allow us a discharge on the grounds we still haven't paid enough to the all powerful creditors!

[Barbisi]

I agree. I think the non-exempt property is the crux of the problem and why your ch13 is rougher compared to the rest of us. Like you, my DMI doesn't have any room for extras like buying back my own property from the creditors. So I made sure on the eve of bankruptcy there wasn't any property for me to buyback.

Hey flashoflight , not sure about the non-exempt property amount -the attorney told us we had a 75k exemption. When we filed we had virtually no equity because we had only put down the minimum amount allowed and only made three payments when we had to file. Now we have made nearly four years of mortgage payments and homes in this state have risen 25-30% (my guess) so if we were allowed to sell, the house could be worth 75K more than we paid. I don't know if the trustee can force us to sell before allowing us a discharge and demanding the profits up to the amount we still owe .
(Isn't that illegal?) LOL