Homestead exemption dispute - serious info needed

[cherir]

We were discharged chapter 7 in mid-November. In our petition, we claimed our home as exempt. Trustee is arguing the point because we moved in the 2 years prior to filling. She only wants our down payment and is not going after the equity, which is unlikey to be any. We have only owned the home 1 year at this current point.

My question is this: If we cannot afford to come up with any money to "pay off" the trustee to keep the home (if we lose the case) and we do in fact "turnover the property for distribution", will that cause a withdrawal/denial or something of our discharged case?

We claimed our $1550 mortgage payment in our expenses. If we are required to turn over the home (which in fact the trustee really only wants us to pony up some money, which we do NOT have and have no way to get any considering the lovely credit one has after bankruptcy), does that mean the bankruptcy petition has to be changed?

I hope I have explained this properly.

Thanks.

[SinkingFast]

I looked back at your previous posts to get bearing on how to help you.

You moved from Iowa to Arkansas. The house in Iowa went into Foreclosure. You bought a house in Arkansas. Filed BK 4 months later.

If the Iowa property was still in your name at the time you filed,........ Having to use out of State Exemptions, the Trustee may be pushing for the Homestead Exemption to apply to the Iowa property. Other folks have posted here with similar issues. Moving and owning property in both States, Trustees push for the Homestead Exemption to apply to the out of State property even when the Debtor/Filer is surrendering the property.

How much money are we talking in the way of a down payment?? And where did the money come from?? Gift from a relative?? Savings??

Had you quit paying other Creditors at the time you purchased your current home??

And what's your attny's point of view. Does he/she think it's worth fighting or are you being advised to pay and move on??

[cherir]

Our attorney has gone the extra mile since November working on getting this resolved because he has a stack of cases from other states that support our position. Trustee has gotten 2 extensions and I have had a surgery in the time period. I think the trustee has been waiting for us to give up and offer to pay, which we simply cannot.

My question was a "worst case scenario" - if we do lose and cannot pay the trustee, I understand an option is to give her the house as stated in the court documents. (Turn over assets to trustee for distribution). Most people would not do this, I realize, but we cannot get any money otherwise, and with my repeated surgeries this last year, cannot deal with selling the house right now to come up with any money, which is highly unlikely.

If we turn the house over, will this retroactively affect our discharge? As of our July filing, we did have a mortgage payment. If we turn over the house, we obviously would no longer have one. Can this affect the discharge?