Minnesota Filers...Means Test and Surrendering Home

[inseriousdebt]

I am looking for anyone whom has done a 7 in Minnesota and surrendered their house or cars.

The reason for this post is that in order to pass the means test our attorney included our new HUGE mortgage payment, even though we are surrendering our home--we are two months behind because our attorney had told us to stop paying. On our intentions page of our petition it reads that we are planning on reaffirming. This was done (or so we were told) because you can do this even though you are planning on giving it up? We are also giving up our leased vehicle and were told to do this right after converting and the 341...even though it reads the same on the intentions page.

****We are NOT and have NOT signed any reaffirmation agreements. We are letting the house and car go****

I am wondering how this has worked for others that surrendered....did you get to include the amount on your means test, and what did your intentions page look like? I am so confused! I am sure they know what they are doing, but to me it sounds a little odd.

Any advice is appreciated. Our 341 is in a week, so anything to help would be great!

[lrprn]

This is a gray area of the current bk law. Whether a mortgage payment can be included on the Means Test and Schedules when the house is being surrendering in the bankruptcy varies from bk district to bk district (even local court to local court within a district) depending on case law decisions already made by local bk judges. Luckily you are probably in one of the local courts that is allowing this.

It's important that you trust that your lawyer is doing the right thing, so ask him/her to explain why doing this is ok in your case.

[songbird81]

I'm in MN and we surrendered our cars. We were able to claim the payments in our expenses, and our statement of intentions listed the vehicles as being surrendered. Are you filing in Mpls or Duluth?

[inseriousdebt]

Minneapolis

Hi there! We are also giving back our lease..but our attorney listed it as 'debt will be reaffirmed pursuant of...' on the intentions page even though it will not be reaffirmed. I know the same thing is on their for our house even though we are also letting that go as well. We just got paperwork from the mortgage...to reaffirm..and of course... we were told not to sign them. We never planned on it, but apparently the attorneys still list it this way on the intentions page...kind of confusing to me.

[songbird81]

I filed in Duluth so I'm not sure how Mpls will handle it, but your attorney sounds like he's on the ball. You can state you'll reaffirm and then rescind it later so you can surrender.

[inseriousdebt]

Thank you...

Thank you for the reply. We will find out more at the 341 I am sure...on Thursday. I will let you all know how it goes. I am sure they are doing this whole thing they way they should. They are one of the best around, and I can't see them doing anything stupid.....but who knows!! I am just trying to understand it all. We just got the papers to reaffirm the mortgage this week. It states that we have 20 days to do so if we want...which we won't be doing.

[inseriousdebt]

341 Today!

We had our 341 today for our conversion case. Everything took a total of 3 minutes to go through. I thought for sure since we are being audited randomly, that we would get grilled for something!! Luckily, we were one of the lucky ones who didn't...and we get to keep our refund this year as well!! YEAH! There was nothing said about the reaffirmation check on the intentions page, even though we are giving up our house and leased car. We had a few people in front of us that just got pounded with questions, couldn't keep their tax refunds for 2007, and wow...I was just amazed at how rude they were being treated! Needless to say, we are relieved.

For those being audited as well, our attorney stated to us that he would only have 10 days from today to object to anything. A lot of posts have read 60 days for others. Of course, creditors still have the 60 days.

Overall, YEAH...we finally made it to the 60 day club!