determining your payment.

[suzyqpug]

How does the trustee determine how much of payment you will be paying? And can that amount can over time? Like dollars amounts and months?

Say once I pa al my mortgage,equity,car,utilities etc. I have left over 200.00 per a month. Now, I owe my creditors 180,000.00. How much will I have to pay back? Also, what does in it at 100% mean? I see it quite often on this forum? How much do you usually pay back?

[isitreal]

You have to go through a basic equation that calculates your "disposable income". This is basically what is left after you pay for all the necessities. It should be noted that a $600 / month car payment is not a necessity. The amount you are allowed for necessities is not what you are currently paying, but what is considered normal for your area. I think these are based on numbers from the IRS as allowances.

Once you calculate what is your disposable income and how much you owe, you will find out how much of that you will be paying back. For example, if you have 180k in UNSECURED debt and you can only contribute $200 per month, you will only be paying approximately $12,000 of that 180k debt.

If for some reason you could afford to pay that entire 180k in 5 years, that would be paying back 100% of what you owe. 12k is nowhere near 100% of 180k. It's hard to imagine (without job loss, etc) that someone would have 180k in debt and not have more than $200 in disposable income.

In a chapter 13, you must at least pay back what the creditors would receive in a chapter 7. I think that amount would be more than 12k.

[woeisme]

I think itsread did a good job addressing most of your questions, but thought I would clarify the last point made about CH 7 vs 13 with an example. If you have say 50K of unexempted assets (equity in house, cars, jewlry, artwork, whatever) you cannot go solely by your disposable income to determine CH 13 payout. You must pay back at least 50K, even if your schedules say you only have $200 per month and can only pay back 12K. If you can't figure out a way to pay back at least 50K, then you can't protect your assets. The only way CH 13 work is if you have fewer unexempted assets than your proposed payback.