creditor failed to file claim

[brett]

Good afternoon, I'm in California, and am 3 1/2 years into a 5 year Chapter 13 repayment plan. My question is, with our base amount that we filed on, the repayment plan was for 60 months. However, it appears that one or two creditors did not file claims, and the amount left to completion of claims, is about 5 months away. I'm wondering, if we pay the amount of claims, do we continue to pay until the end of 5 years, or once the claims are paid, we will get the discharge early? Also, the creditors that did not file claims, are they able to come after us after the discharge, or would they just be charging off that amount? Thanks!

[lrprn]

I'm wondering, if we pay the amount of claims, do we continue to pay until the end of 5 years, or once the claims are paid, we will get the discharge early?

Ch 13 plans are successfully discharged in two ways - (1) you complete the number of payments specified in your plan; or (2) your payments pay all claims made by your unsecured creditors who filed claims in full (100% of what they claimed). You're asking about #2, and yes, if your plan pays 100% of your unsecured creditor claims in full, your plan should end then. However, you need to keep making your payments until your lawyer or your trustee indicates you can stop.

The exception is if you have something built into your plan - car payments the trustee is making until the car(s) is/are paid in full, a payment arrangement with the trustee to retain an asset that wasn't fully protected by your state's bk exemptions, etc - that must be paid using the remaining payments *after* your unsecured creditors are paid in full. Do you have anything like that in your plan?

Also, the creditors that did not file claims, are they able to come after us after the discharge, or would they just be charging off that amount? Thanks!

If an unsecured creditor doesn't file a claim on time, that creditor gets no $$, nada, zilch, NOTHING from your plan, period. However, a secured creditor who doesn't file a claim (rare) can be a different story.

[brett]

I apologize, I guess I never saw that someone replied to my thread. To answer your questions, yes, we are paying a vehicle we retained through the plan. With the amount they are getting paid monthly, it looks like 3-4 more payments will satisfy that vehicle. However, the trustee will have the funds on hand to continue to pay that vehicle, with one more payment from us into our plan. our unsecured creditors stopped receving payments in April, as all were satisfied, and only our vehicle is being paid now.

To answer your second question, the creditors i was referring to were unsecured, however it does bring up another question. We had 2 vehicles we surrendered in our case, and both lenders were going to have deficiency balances after selling the vehicles at auction. both lenders originally filed secured claims, however neither have ever come back and filed amended claims for the unsecured deficiency balances. can those 2 lenders come back and file amended proofs of claim at anytime? I do remember seeing in our chapter 13 documentation that both of these lenders were listed in the section titled "Secured debt satisfied by the surrender of property". Both vehicle loans were financed longer than 910 days from the filing of our case.