Passed means test but trustee still asking for more info?

[Help!]

Help! Does that mean if no presumption of abuse is reported on Pacer one week prior to the 341 that it should go smoother. My 341 is on the 8th....I am nervous.

No, but if no statement of presumed abuse is filed 10 days after your 341 hearing you're in good shape. Try not to be nervous... be prepared instead. It might make you feel better to contact your attorney and make sure the UST has not requested any additional documents from you (the UST had requested them prior to our 341 hearing but our attorney "forgot" all about them).

[Help!]

One-time bonuses lie in one of those means-test grey areas, but recurring bonuses which can reasonably be expected to continue in the future do not. Unfortunately, the UST is not given the discretion to include or exclude bonuses from your income (that requires judicial discretion). There are rulings in which a one-time bonus has been excluded from income on the means test, but a recurring bonus (such as profit sharing or annual bonus) is definitely income. Objecting to the UST's motion to dismiss would be expensive and is unlikely to get you anywhere.

Based on what you've said, a Ch. 13 plan isn't feasible either. You are in exactly the position I was, only in my case it was a one-time bonus and I was prepared to take my case all the way to the judge because I knew I had a strong case for "special circumstances". There is only one thing left to do, as I see it. Demonstrate to the UST that dismissal of your case would not be in the best interest of your creditors.

You will have to do some serious soul-searching about how important Ch. 7 discharge is to you. How much are you willing to give up? If the answer is "everything!" as it was in our case, you can offer up "everything!" in the form of assets to repay your creditors. If you can show that liquidation of assets would result in greater repayment to creditors than a Ch. 13 repayment plan, there is still hope.

[diviaruba]

We get a bonus yearly that ups our income but we use it to pay our home equity down. I out it in our essay and what we use it for. I didn't break it down over a 12 month period and add it to our monthly income but I didn't add the hoe equity as a monthly expense either because we pay it off all at once when we receive bonus.

We also had didn't show our 800 401 k money as stopped because we stopped it right after filing so I guess it could look like extra income. We stopped it because we reaffirmed our house and need it to be able to afford our bills.

So theoretically it could look like we have 800 plus yearly bonus as extra I guess even though it is all spoken for. I explained we had stopped the 401 k plus what the bonus is used for but I guess she might want it for a 13.

Lawyer is going to call her and get back to us since she filed presumption. He thinks she wants us in a 13. He said we would have to move our numbers around to make it look like we have enough to repay a 13. I don't understand how if we don't have the money we have to report we spend less than we do to fit into a 13??

If you have no extra money aren't you a 7??

Unfortunately, the way the U.S. Trustee sees it is that you do have extra money. That bonus, which might have been explained away if it went towards recurring bills, is likely being seen as available funds because you are essentially using it to increase your net worth by reducing the principal value of your outstanding HELOC.

While you are certainly allowed to convert your property from non-exempt form (e.g. cash) to exempt form (e.g. increased equity in a home created by using the cash to pay down a mortgage) prior to filing the bankruptcy case, the nature of that cash (income, as a bonus) retains its character. In other words, the U.S. Trustee sees that income as available to pay your other creditors.