Our chapter 13 journey has started

[Carmella]

That's great you have the paperwork that you paid off the loan! I am glad you checked PACER to find out this information.

[notreallyme]

Login into PACER, query your case, go to Claims Register, make sure "view claims summary report" box is checked. It should be 10 cents. Save the output.

Thank you - I just did that and saw two claims here that weren't on the NDC site yet. One is legitimate and one is total bs. It was a 2,000 loan that was paid off in February 2022 and they have submitted a claim for $16,308.62. I have printed off the pay-off letter and they payment history. This was a temporary very high interest loan that I paid off immediately. The claim they submitted makes it look like I had never made a payment and they are projecting out a year from the loan date with high interest rate. Total garbage, but I am a packrat so I have downloads of all of the payment receipts and they payoff letter.

There a total of 30 claims on the PACER site. The first 28 match up exactly with both claim number and claim amount with what is on NDC. One matches to what I expected, so I will give my lawyer a heads up to object to this claim.

[flashoflight]

Login into PACER, query your case, go to Claims Register, make sure "view claims summary report" box is checked. It should be 10 cents. Save the output.

[notreallyme]

Not a lot of actual movement this week. Yesterday (7/26) was the claims bar date. Looked at NDC today - I hope it is up to date - it says it was updated yesterday. About 35% of the unsecured debt dollars haven't been submitted. (This is based on what I expected which is lower than what was included in the plan).

So good news on the plan. Trustee is collecting 6% but 10% is built into the plan. Submitted debt is a lot less than we expected. So either plan term can go to less than 45 months or plan payment can go down $600-$800 per month. Trustee is using a TILL rate of 5.5% on the secured debt. So down considerably on vehicle and up a little on the other for an overall savings on interest.

Used PACER for the first time. I have been using the RSS feed trick that someone pointed out (Sorry - can't recall the user to provide proper credit) and finally saw some documents. Pulled them down from PACER - one was an amended plan - not sure what the amendment was as the monthly payment didn't change nor did what was included / excluded from our initial petition. Second was setting the date for our confirmation hearing of 8/23/22 and a final plan objection date of 8/09/22.

Be interested to see what payments the trustee makes this month - last month they only paid to the secured creditors so our mortgage is falling further behind.

[notreallyme]

Nothing much happened this week - capital one finally submitted the claim on the car. Lot of claims not submitted yet. Filed claims are still about 30,000 below what I expected when we submitted. 9 days to claims bar date.

[notreallyme]

Nothing to report this week. No new creditors reported, no new pacer documents. 2.5 weeks until claims bar date.

I know a lot of claims will submit in the next two weeks, but will be nice if some of them don't. Right now unsecured is about 30,000 less than we expected and secured is 9,500 less. Capital one still hasn't submitted our auto loan, but I am sure they will. If they don't, we will submit a claims form on their behalf as we want to keep the car. Book value is twice what we owe on it and I need it to get back and forth to work. If unsecured stay where they are now, that would mean either $500 less in our plan payment (30,000/60) or if plan payment stays the same, ending the plan over a year early Either would be really nice. One can hope at least.

[shipo]

Don't bother with disputes, they won't help you gain even a single point. The fact is, having a bankruptcy on your record trumps all other data points; my recommendation is to simply ride things out from here and start rebuilding your credit.

[notreallyme]

Not much to report this week. A couple more creditors submitted claims - Capital one reported 3 of 4 credit cards, but not the auto loan yet.

Several creditors have reported May as 30 days late but June included in BK on my credit report. I'll have to do some research - my bankruptcy was filed in May - I didn't think they could report May as late then included in bankruptcy as of June. They should be included in bankruptcy as of May. Doesn't matter much, but my credit score took a big hit from this - dropped 30 points when bankruptcy was reported in May and another 40 points when 11 late payments showed up on my credit report. If it doesn't clean up, I will file disputes the next time I am trying to get credit which won't be for years hopefully.

At the 341 hearing, the trustee said confirmation might be at the end of July, so wasn't expecting any disbursement this month. If there were disbursements, I would have expected them to be for the mortgage. Instead they made one payment for our other car loans. I thought order was 1) ongoing mortgage, 2) priority like taxes, 3) secured then 4) unsecured.

[Carmella]

My unsecured cards got whatever amount they requested. No interest or other fees after they filed.

There is a trustee fee, but I don't really know how that works.

[notreallyme]

Weekly update - not much to report.

341 meeting was today. Only two items of interest on our case. 1) told the trustee about a small state income tax bill that came up - it is already in the NDC database but wasn't in our petition. Basically state disagreed with how we entered income earned in another state. Small amount in the scale of things. 2) when he was going over secured debts (mortgage, heloc and car) he had the higher monthly payment on our HELOC. Our attorney said he is communicating with the bank. Trustee agreed it shouldn't be $250 higher a month than what is on our monthly statement and he doesn't want to pay more than the valid amount as he would prefer to pay other creditors more and end plan early (we are in 100% plan).

No other creditors have reported since last week. halfway to bar date and right now, based on $- about 70% filed a claim. Based on number of creditors around 30% of unsecured creditors have filed - mostly the larger ones except for Capital one who is four credit cards and one car loan. Sure they will report soon - they have closed our cards and moved the loan handling on the car to a loan servicing firm. I guess more than 30% if you count capital one as one creditor rather than as five debts.

Interesting how many no-shows there were at the hearing before they called us. We were the seventh and 2 no shows and one whose phone disconnected half way through. They have all been rescheduled to July or August. Also one person who was there for third time but got another continuance as they still need to file 2020 and 2021 taxes so rescheduled for August. Trustee said most of the people he was talking to today would have their confirmation hearing in July if nothing was outstanding. Our bar date is 7/26 for non-government so not sure if we are in the July group or not. Hope so as I would like to see the payments start going to our mortgage. Trustee also said he makes disbursements on the last workday of the month, which is good to know. NDC and trustee are slow recording our payments even though they are direct from my paycheck. Pay of 5/27 recorded 6/1. Pay of 6/10 recorded 6/17 but he said we are on track with payments. Our lawyer was right, very stress free meeting.

Does anyone know - does interest and till rate only apply to secured debts or do unsecured also get interest? Closer to confirmation, I will ask our lawyer when he and the trustee work out the final plan.

[notreallyme]

Not a lot has happened, but wanted to make sure I document things for my peace of mind and also incase anyone else is on the same stage of the journey.

On the HElOC - the monthly payment that was submitted, my lawyer agrees that it is too high based on the latest monthly statements that I sent in. He said addressing this is part of the the original fee as this falls under validating debts before the plan confirmation, so he is working with the bank lawyers. The bank lawyer filled out a lot of the claim paperwork by hand. To my untrained eye, it looks like a simple mistake - a couple of places in the paperwork he switched between HELOC and car loan. The amount he submitted as a monthly payment is the sum of the two, then an arrears for the HELOC and total outstanding for the car. Laywer said it would be fixed before confirmation.

We are a month after filing, and about a third of the creditors have filed. Ignoring mortgage and HELOC, those that have filed are $2,500 over what w we submitted. Mainly because Verizon filed a claim for the phones where we were making monthly payments (but monthly payments then dropped so a wash). And an old medical bill that we had forgotten about showed up. As our submitted numbers were about $10,000 to high, we are still at a point where the initial proposed monthly payment will either be reduced or we will pay out before 60 months. Either way works for us. Looks like payments show up at the trustee's office about five days after they are subtracted from my paycheck.

Mortgages and HELOC looked strange to me. When we filed, we owed April and May was coming up on the "late" date. Thought both would be included in arrears. However, both only placed the missed April in arrears. I guess that means our monthly payments to the trustee have to catch up on May and June (and soon July) to keep us on track. After the trustee makes his first payments, I will look at the statements and see how the banks record these.

I did have one creditor run an ACH payment again on 6/10/2022 - my last pay date. This time I called their corporate office, they said the "main" office for our state hadn't entered anything into the system yet. Strange corporate structure - payments go to a local office, credit report shows a "main" office in Missouri (where my attorney sent the paperwork) and the corporate office is in Chicago. Attorney sent copies of letters to the local office and Chicago. Corporate office said once they receive the paperwork they will be reversing the ACH. At this point I don't care if they reverse or just submit a lower proof of claim. I have already been charged the NSF and its not worth trying to get the $35 back.

So far things are going smoothly. 341 hearing is next week on 6/22/2022, but lawyer says not to worry about that - it is more of a formality. He said it is more important to go over the proof of claims before confirmation. Still 40 days until the bar date.

[womanonfire]

Now for my first major surprise from NDC. Our HELOC bank just submitted their proof of claim and it is all messed up:

3) then the what the heck moment. Our HELOC maturity date is 8/20/2028. So until then we are supposed to be paying interest only. Balance is a little under 100,000 so payment would be about $396 a month with the new interest rate. Looked at May 31 statement - shows a payment of $360.91. Look online at the account, it shows a payment of $349.95 was due on May 20. So payment should be below $400. They submitted $646.17 to the trustee. So what the heck? They aren't adding the arrears as that was a separate submission. $646 won't pay of the HELOC in 60 months - payment was set to jump to $1,050 in September 2028. So where does $646 come from?

Has anyone else have something similar happen? This increased the Heloc payment by $250 per payment, or 15,000 over the full 60 months versus what was in our plan. Long run it will even out since our outstanding balance will go down by this amount. However, this totally eats away the cushion we were expecting from the duplicate debts that were included in our initial submission. So long run - ie after the plan is completed - is fine, but short run an extra $250 starts to make it really tight during the plan.

My original thoughts are to not ask the attorney about this yet - going to save up debt disputes / questions for between the 341 and confirmation hearing. Our should I contact them right away?

What turned into a stress free week now has added stress for the weekend.

I have not had a similar situation happen but I do know what I would do. I would send them a qualified written request/ request for information, and notice of error under RESPA and wait for their response before paying my attorney to handle it for two reasons:

1. They may adjust it after receiving your letter or explain it to you to ensure that it is correct. If they do neither, then you could sure for penalties if you have damages (emotional distress or money damages).

2. It will save you from having to pay your attorney unless it is included as part of the over all bk cost.

[notreallyme]

Interesting. Why the extra accounts for PACER?

Also what would be the advantage of paying it off early other than the obvious? Am I being stupid by asking this? lols. Mine is 5% but my credit score is TRASHED!

Pacer allows you the first $30 for free. However, they charge you 10 cents a page for returned pages on searches. Not even just pages you look at or download - any page that is returned. So if you have a lot of documents, you can see the first 300 pages, then need to switch to a different pacer account or have a monthly bill.

Now for my first major surprise from NDC. Our HELOC bank just submitted their proof of claim and it is all messed up:

1) arrears increased by $7 = no big deal when spread over 60 payments (should have been missed May payment plus fees so a little under 400, they submitted 407)
2) increased our fixed interest rate from 3.75 to 4.25 in April - I understood this, we have penalty clauses. After our filing, they moved this to 4.75% which is the Trustee's discount rate from his site. Again, not worth fighting over - the extra 0.5% would be an additional 500 each year, or $42 a payment.
3) then the what the heck moment. Our HELOC maturity date is 8/20/2028. So until then we are supposed to be paying interest only. Balance is a little under 100,000 so payment would be about $396 a month with the new interest rate. Looked at May 31 statement - shows a payment of $360.91. Look online at the account, it shows a payment of $349.95 was due on May 20. So payment should be below $400. They submitted $646.17 to the trustee. So what the heck? They aren't adding the arrears as that was a separate submission. $646 won't pay of the HELOC in 60 months - payment was set to jump to $1,050 in September 2028. So where does $646 come from?

Has anyone else have something similar happen? This increased the Heloc payment by $250 per payment, or 15,000 over the full 60 months versus what was in our plan. Long run it will even out since our outstanding balance will go down by this amount. However, this totally eats away the cushion we were expecting from the duplicate debts that were included in our initial submission. So long run - ie after the plan is completed - is fine, but short run an extra $250 starts to make it really tight during the plan.

My original thoughts are to not ask the attorney about this yet - going to save up debt disputes / questions for between the 341 and confirmation hearing. Our should I contact them right away?

What turned into a stress free week now has added stress for the weekend.

[Carmella]

Extra accounts for PACER in case you surpass the limit of free documents then you can log on another account and see documents for free.

There was only one time in the beginning when I opened too many documents and had a very small amount charged. At that time they didn't allow as many free pages as they do now which was part of the reason I went over the free limit as well as I didn't know what the heck I was doing and opened a few things more than once!

[womanonfire]

Welcome to the Chapter 13 club notreallyme!

I just made my 6th payment, fun, fun, fun! Here is to hoping that many of your creditors do not file claims!