I'm really stressed here. We just filed Ch. 13 last week with plans to do a 2nd mortgage lien strip so we could keep the house and pay the 1st mortgage outside the plan. All other debts are unsecured.
After really giving it some thought, we're worried about having so little DMI over the next 5 yrs and still having a 1st mortgage payment that's really high. According to our appraisal, we're around $35K upside down on the 1st mortgage, so basically we'd be renting with a really high payment for several years unless the market rebounds drastically.
With that we'd be really strapped for the next 5 yrs and we'd be under the trustee's thumb with the constant worry of knowing he could take all our disposable income. Also Chase won't allow us to pay the mortgage online anymore; they said we can only mail our payment in since we're in BK. They could conveniently lose our payment or post it late (or it could really get lost in the mail) and we'd be screwed. After talking to them on the phone today, I really don't trust them. When my wife asked to speak to a supervisor, they transferred her to some hotel/casino! The operator who answered the phone said they do it all the time. I've also heard they're bad about charging extra fees when you're in BK. We won't really have any wiggle room for our payments to go up.
Anyway, now we're thinking we'll convert to 7, get the discharge in a few months (hopefully) and just deal with having a lien on the house. Then we can keep up the payments and keep the house if we'd like or let it go in foreclosure at any time without jeopardizing our BK case, since it'd already be discharged. It just seems kind of foolish to commit to trying to keep a house when we can walk away from it in Ch. 7 if it gets to be too much of a financial burden.
Sorry about the long winded post, but I'm stressing. We have an appt. tomorrow w/the atty. to talk about converting. Any gurus here have any thoughts on this?
After really giving it some thought, we're worried about having so little DMI over the next 5 yrs and still having a 1st mortgage payment that's really high. According to our appraisal, we're around $35K upside down on the 1st mortgage, so basically we'd be renting with a really high payment for several years unless the market rebounds drastically.
With that we'd be really strapped for the next 5 yrs and we'd be under the trustee's thumb with the constant worry of knowing he could take all our disposable income. Also Chase won't allow us to pay the mortgage online anymore; they said we can only mail our payment in since we're in BK. They could conveniently lose our payment or post it late (or it could really get lost in the mail) and we'd be screwed. After talking to them on the phone today, I really don't trust them. When my wife asked to speak to a supervisor, they transferred her to some hotel/casino! The operator who answered the phone said they do it all the time. I've also heard they're bad about charging extra fees when you're in BK. We won't really have any wiggle room for our payments to go up.
Anyway, now we're thinking we'll convert to 7, get the discharge in a few months (hopefully) and just deal with having a lien on the house. Then we can keep up the payments and keep the house if we'd like or let it go in foreclosure at any time without jeopardizing our BK case, since it'd already be discharged. It just seems kind of foolish to commit to trying to keep a house when we can walk away from it in Ch. 7 if it gets to be too much of a financial burden.
Sorry about the long winded post, but I'm stressing. We have an appt. tomorrow w/the atty. to talk about converting. Any gurus here have any thoughts on this?
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