Mortgage paid outside plan added legal fee

[inOverMy]

My Ch 13 BK was approved by the court last week. My mortgage is paid outside of the plan. I made arrangements with mortgage co to auto debit, I just have to call and authorize again every 90 days. I received my mortgage statement in the mail and there is an extra $350 “legal fee” shown as “attorney cost” tacked onto my mortgage payment. My last payment is listed as “partial payment” in a suspense account until this new payment is received. Is this typical? I will contact my BK attorney but she takes forever to respond to my emails

[justbroke]

If you are paying outside the plan, then the Trustee isn't going to pay the $350 fee which was ostensibly to file a claim in the Chapter 13 bankruptcy. Your payments will go into suspension and this could trickle down over months causing you to be behind in payments.

Call your attorney's office as many times as necessary to explain this.

Hopefully you have the $350 to get your payments out of suspense and you get back on track.

[inOverMy]

Well that stinks. It makes sense where the fee came from now that you explained it. I guess it could be worse. Will have to scrape together the extra fee.

[justbroke]

Also, be aware of late fees. Since you are paying outside of the plan you don't have as many protections of the bankruptcy court. In some cases, a confirmed plan that pays a creditor outside the plan grants the creditor "leave" from the automatic stay and allows them to charge things like late fees.

Best wishes.