Seen a Bankruptcy Lawyer today and have many questions.....

[Guest123]

No... Justbroke just stated it differently than I did, however the exact same issue was mentioned to you by several people that you must pay secure items, trustee and lawyer fees. Secured creditors, priority claims (taxes), non-exempt items (if applicable), trustee fee's and lawyer fee's...all play a part, that unequivocally and ultimately will have to do with DMI. If you dont have enough $ to pay back your secured and priority items items, trustee fee's and lawyer fees (if you rolled them in) then you cannot fund a 13 plan payment.

Not going to argue with you - again trying to help you but apparently you dont view it that way so I wont bother any longer with any of your posts.

Have a good day and good luck to you.

WOW talk about thickheaded! Justbroke said it is NOT just DMI and yet you continue to argue with me about it.

I'm sorry but I just don't find any of your post helpful at all, if anythign they are confusing as you are repeating what others are saying...just slightly differently and calling them wrong, when in fact you are giving wrong information.

[momofthree]

As of now my lawyer was currently using the lookback ruling for our normal payments and from my understanding in my case they can still use the overtime and bonuses if it is needed to pay secured debt.
Again I don't see how letting go the secured items I have now will help as that will increase my DMI making it even harder to do a ch.7......unless I'm missing something.
The only items we need are the cars. No question about it. Everything else could go if a ch.7 was possible.
After going over a few things it doesn't look as bad as it seems.

Thanks for the replies and I will keep everyone updated.

Oh, I must have misunderstood you. I though that the overtime was the reason you didn't qualify for a ch.7. So, you'd have to file 13 even without the overtime? That sucks.

You've said a few times that you can't afford the secured payments without your overtime, so I assumed (you know what they say about people who assume, lol) that you wouldn't be able to continue to make those payments if you didn't have the overtime 2x a year any longer.

[LadyInTheRed]

Again I don't see how letting go the secured items I have now will help as that will increase my DMI making it even harder to do a ch.7......unless I'm missing something.

Letting the secured items go won't help you qualify for a 7, but it may help lower your Chap 13 payment. If I understand you correctly, the $1300 payment is above your $500 DMI, because the payment includes payments on the secured debt. If you give up secured assets, your payment will go down. Also, if you are keeping non-exempt assets, that may also be making your payment higher than it otherwise would be.

The bankruptcy code does not require that all secured debt be paid during the plan. Do the loans extend beyond 5 years from your filing date? I believe you should be able to keep paying on the debt after the Chap 13. I think that debt just wouldn't be discharged. I'm not 100% positive about how that all works, especially if a trustee requires the secured debt be paid within the plan.

[Pandora]

I left that thread along because of this post stating exactly what I said:

Based on that I was correct and your were incorrect! Thought you understood that when you stated justbroke was that man.....

Letting the vehicles go is not an option. And I don't see how that will do anything but make it harder to do a ch.7 as it will add more DMI to the outcome.

The problem with us and the MeansTest is our 401K contrabution and a 401k loan, we can't add them so it makes it look like we have more DMI then we really do.

No... Justbroke just stated it differently than I did, however the exact same issue was mentioned to you by several people that you must pay secure items, trustee and lawyer fees. Secured creditors, priority claims (taxes), non-exempt items (if applicable), trustee fee's and lawyer fee's...all play a part, that unequivocally and ultimately will have to do with DMI. If you dont have enough $ to pay back your secured and priority items items, trustee fee's and lawyer fees (if you rolled them in) then you cannot fund a 13 plan payment.

Not going to argue with you - again trying to help you but apparently you dont view it that way so I wont bother any longer with any of your posts.

Have a good day and good luck to you.

[Guest123]

Your overtime will fall off of your lookback as of Dec.1st, so just wait to file until Dec. and then file a ch.7. You will probably have to let the quads go though, and possibly other secured debt as well so that you can make ends meet after the ch.7.

Sorry about the cut in pay Good luck and keep us posted.

As of now my lawyer was currently using the lookback ruling for our normal payments and from my understanding in my case they can still use the overtime and bonuses if it is needed to pay secured debt.
Again I don't see how letting go the secured items I have now will help as that will increase my DMI making it even harder to do a ch.7......unless I'm missing something.
The only items we need are the cars. No question about it. Everything else could go if a ch.7 was possible.
After going over a few things it doesn't look as bad as it seems.

Thanks for the replies and I will keep everyone updated.

[Guest123]

Guest123 - thats what we were trying to tell you in this posting but you got so very defensive and told everyone they were incorrect.

http://www.bkforum.com/showthread.php?63440-High-trustee-payment/page3

You can still do a Ch. 7 if you are over median but have neg DMI (meaning you do not have enough to fund your plan to pay secured items, lawyer, and trustee fees). You may have to just let the vehicles go....

I wish you all the best and hope you can get it figured out.

I left that thread along because of this post stating exactly what I said:

Just a little information. Plan payment is NOT the DMI value calculated by the Chapter 13 Means Test on Official Form B22C. Plan payment is based upon a combination of the DMI on Form B22C and payments on secured debt (if paid through Trustee), priority debt (taxes), and the Trustee administrative fees.

Based on that I was correct and your were incorrect! Thought you understood that when you stated justbroke was that man.....

Letting the vehicles go is not an option. And I don't see how that will do anything but make it harder to do a ch.7 as it will add more DMI to the outcome.

The problem with us and the MeansTest is our 401K contrabution and a 401k loan, we can't add them so it makes it look like we have more DMI then we really do.

[momofthree]

More questions:

A few discussions and some informations we found out brought up some questions.
Looks like we will not be able to include the overtime as it will be fazed out from our position.
So with that if we don't qualify for ch.7 according to the Means test and fail to have DMI that will fund a ch.13 What Do We Do?
Just learned about the overtime situation Friday and been thinking about it all weekend. Contactig the lawyer via email first thing Monday morning to see what he says.
Even after looking into the look forward ruling I still don't see how they could have used it to fund the ch. 13 or how the trustee would allow it.
I'll go over the means test again tomorrow and post the results here if needed. I know for sure we are over the median.
Our lawyer figure DMI around $500 but we would need around $1300 to just pay our secured debts/cars, lawyer and trustee. $1300 is just not doable.
What our our options?
Anything I should ask the lawyer that I have over looked.

Thanks

Your overtime will fall off of your lookback as of Dec.1st, so just wait to file until Dec. and then file a ch.7. You will probably have to let the quads go though, and possibly other secured debt as well so that you can make ends meet after the ch.7.

Sorry about the cut in pay Good luck and keep us posted.

[Pandora]

More questions:

A few discussions and some informations we found out brought up some questions.
Looks like we will not be able to include the overtime as it will be fazed out from our position.
So with that if we don't qualify for ch.7 according to the Means test and fail to have DMI that will fund a ch.13 What Do We Do?
Just learned about the overtime situation Friday and been thinking about it all weekend. Contactig the lawyer via email first thing Monday morning to see what he says.
Even after looking into the look forward ruling I still don't see how they could have used it to fund the ch. 13 or how the trustee would allow it.
I'll go over the means test again tomorrow and post the results here if needed. I know for sure we are over the median.
Our lawyer figure DMI around $500 but we would need around $1300 to just pay our secured debts/cars, lawyer and trustee. $1300 is just not doable.
What our our options?
Anything I should ask the lawyer that I have over looked.

Thanks

Guest123 - thats what we were trying to tell you in this posting but you got so very defensive and told everyone they were incorrect.

http://www.bkforum.com/showthread.php?63440-High-trustee-payment/page3

You can still do a Ch. 7 if you are over median but have neg DMI (meaning you do not have enough to fund your plan to pay secured items, lawyer, and trustee fees). You may have to just let the vehicles go....

I wish you all the best and hope you can get it figured out.

[Guest123]

More questions:

A few discussions and some informations we found out brought up some questions.
Looks like we will not be able to include the overtime as it will be fazed out from our position.
So with that if we don't qualify for ch.7 according to the Means test and fail to have DMI that will fund a ch.13 What Do We Do?
Just learned about the overtime situation Friday and been thinking about it all weekend. Contactig the lawyer via email first thing Monday morning to see what he says.
Even after looking into the look forward ruling I still don't see how they could have used it to fund the ch. 13 or how the trustee would allow it.
I'll go over the means test again tomorrow and post the results here if needed. I know for sure we are over the median.
Our lawyer figure DMI around $500 but we would need around $1300 to just pay our secured debts/cars, lawyer and trustee. $1300 is just not doable.
What our our options?
Anything I should ask the lawyer that I have over looked.

Thanks

[Guest123]

So being in AZ, just my experience here. My monthly income was calculated by taking 6 months paystubs, adding together, dividing by 6. Which actually screwed me over because I had received a bonus just within that 6 month back window and had been told that we would not get quarterly bonuses going forward until further notice.... yet that bonus is factored into my income going forward. I could not wait any longer to file at that point so that is just what I had to do, (I also have a baby coming at the end of the year and will be able to make some "changes" then anyway).

Once they had my income number the subtracted my allowed expenses from that to come up with my DMI (disposable monthly income). This is what I have to pay each month.

I was also told that if there was a significant change in pay that we could "recalculate" things, but that again they would pull 6 months paystubs and divide by 6 (which I will do as part of increasing my expenses when the baby comes and at that point I will not have had any bonuses in over a year).

The 6 months stubs we pulled for the lawyer list an average of $7152 take home pay. A regular month is $4962 take home.
Our income is changing alot this year. Hopefully a lawyer can figure it out and explain it better to us.

[goon]

I just need to see how they will work the payments for the loan after they calculate the overtime. Being that our overtime is alot less this year, if they go by the last 6 months we would pay alot more.

We need to file, I just need understanding how they will work the overtime into the payment and how it will effect us on the months there is no overtime.

So being in AZ, just my experience here. My monthly income was calculated by taking 6 months paystubs, adding together, dividing by 6. Which actually screwed me over because I had received a bonus just within that 6 month back window and had been told that we would not get quarterly bonuses going forward until further notice.... yet that bonus is factored into my income going forward. I could not wait any longer to file at that point so that is just what I had to do, (I also have a baby coming at the end of the year and will be able to make some "changes" then anyway).

Once they had my income number the subtracted my allowed expenses from that to come up with my DMI (disposable monthly income). This is what I have to pay each month.

I was also told that if there was a significant change in pay that we could "recalculate" things, but that again they would pull 6 months paystubs and divide by 6 (which I will do as part of increasing my expenses when the baby comes and at that point I will not have had any bonuses in over a year).

[Guest123]

I just gave back a house as part of my ch13 in AZ ... in AZ they cannot come after you for the deficiency on a foreclosure/surrender on the first (or a second if it was used for purchase). So the first mortgage bank will just get whatever they make from the house at auction, that wont get paid out of your plan.

In some states this is handled differently. In my case I also have a second, the second was obtained to make home improvements after the purchase, so given that I was WAY upside down (owed $154k on the first and $37k on the second, house sold at auction for $39k) the second becomes unsecured debt and gets paid essentially the same as credit cards.

Thanks this is what I wanted to hear, I wish the lawyer would have explained it like this.

oh and from what I understand with the quads, you "may" be able to keep them, but your plan would have to pay the unsecured lenders at least the equity that you have in them ( as you are probably already using the vehicle exemptions). Someone will probably chime in with a better explanation of this.... but because they are recreational vehicles, there may be objections from the unsecured creditors.

and yes because they are secured debt they would get paid off before unsecured debt, which would reduce the amount going to unsecured debt.

Yeah, the lawyer said that we could keep them but we would have to paid the remaining balance on them.

I just need to see how they will work the payments for the loan after they calculate the overtime. Being that our overtime is alot less this year, if they go by the last 6 months we would pay alot more.

We need to file, I just need understanding how they will work the overtime into the payment and how it will effect us on the months there is no overtime.

[goon]

oh and from what I understand with the quads, you "may" be able to keep them, but your plan would have to pay the unsecured lenders at least the equity that you have in them ( as you are probably already using the vehicle exemptions). Someone will probably chime in with a better explanation of this.... but because they are recreational vehicles, there may be objections from the unsecured creditors.

and yes because they are secured debt they would get paid off before unsecured debt, which would reduce the amount going to unsecured debt.

[goon]

I just gave back a house as part of my ch13 in AZ ... in AZ they cannot come after you for the deficiency on a foreclosure/surrender on the first (or a second if it was used for purchase). So the first mortgage bank will just get whatever they make from the house at auction, that wont get paid out of your plan.

In some states this is handled differently. In my case I also have a second, the second was obtained to make home improvements after the purchase, so given that I was WAY upside down (owed $154k on the first and $37k on the second, house sold at auction for $39k) the second becomes unsecured debt and gets paid essentially the same as credit cards.

[Guest123]

I have just contacted a few more lawyers.
I have done the means test and don't qualify for a chapter 7.
We would rather file a 7. We want to let the house go and get a fresh start.
We don't have much assests to protect, we have very little to show for all of the debt we have.

I don't know if it is borderline if we can't file the 13
When the lawyer plugged in the numbers we had a payment of $500 a month for the 13, both cars were included in the plan.
The cars total $60K
That wouldn't even pay off one car plus the lawyer, which is why we didn't qualify without adding the overtime.

But I get what you are saying about the overtime and is what had me scratching our head when we left.
I think it would be hard to adjust our payments 4 times a year for the overtime months. I don't see a trustee relying on overtime.

Thanks for the responses and keep them coming.

EDIT:

I just talked to my original lawyer and he said the house was included but not on the list......I guess they don't get paid.
He also said that we make too much to file a Chapter7 and we HAVE to include the overtime to submit enough DMI for a payment that would cover the cars, laywer, trustee and some of the unsecured debt.

We also have 2 quads (4wheelers) that were are current on and wanted to keep if possible. He said since they are titled vehicles they need to be treated like the cars and that they move up on the priority list the trustee pays. I'm perfectly fine with this but does it effect the means test or anything?