Bank Account Lien?

[Planetary]

Well, now that I've bored you all with my tale of woe, has anyone in a similar situation managed to "un-freeze" their account and if so, how did they go about it and how long did it take? It sadly appears our attorney is about as useful as a whistle on a plow and we'll be trying to get our money back on our own.

BTW, our BK hearing date is 6/5........

[dingdong]

Isn't that a violation of the BK stay, since the date the account was frozen was after your date of filing.

I don't know, but if I were in the same shoes I would go litigious nutcase on Wells Fargo.

You don't owe any back taxes, do you, where a tax lien may have happened to show up around your time of filing?

I would get my BK lawyer on it right away, and maybe their malpractice E/O insurance would pay a claim if you don't get your money back?

[phoenixrisin]

Planteary- if you had a file# on 4/29, and the levy occured 5/1, then you should be covered 100% under the automatic stay. You just need to send the bank your information. Please let us know how it turns out!

I am hoping to have a file# this week so I can get my money back!

[Planetary]

Isn't that a violation of the BK stay, since the date the account was frozen was after your date of filing.

I don't know, but if I were in the same shoes I would go litigious nutcase on Wells Fargo.

You don't owe any back taxes, do you, where a tax lien may have happened to show up around your time of filing?

I would get my BK lawyer on it right away, and maybe their malpractice E/O insurance would pay a claim if you don't get your money back?

No, we don't owe any back taxes. Any issue with the IRS is out of the question. As I kind of indicated before, our BK attorney looks like he may be of little help in this.

[franken55406]

This is standard practice for Wells Fargo.

I had a checking account with Wells Fargo until three weeks ago. I also have a mortgage with them as well and have stopped paying. What prompted me in closing my checking account is when during my appointment with my hair stylist who had her checking account poached by Wells when she and her ex BF stopped paying and attempted a short sail. They began with $200, $400 withdrawals.. She tried to close the checking account, but those unauthorized withdrawals incurred a negative balance. Her negative balance is like $5000 now and are threatening a lawsuit. I closed mine the next day..

[dingdong]

Perhaps a consumer attorney could help, or maybe you could contact another BK attorney and see if they could handle an AP against Wells Fargo for sanctions for violating the BK stay?


Did you notice Wells Fargo in writing of your BK filing and violation of the stay?

If you log into PACER, you can save the PDF file of your CH7 BK filing to your hard drive. Perhaps you can print a copy of the filing, send it certified mail to Wells Fargo legal department informing them of their violation and also email the legal dept at the same time with an attachment of the filing notice telling them you will ask for sanctions in BK court if they don't immediately release the funds.

[Planetary]

Perhaps a consumer attorney could help, or maybe you could contact another BK attorney and see if they could handle an AP against Wells Fargo for sanctions for violating the BK stay?


Did you notice Wells Fargo in writing of your BK filing and violation of the stay?

If you log into PACER, you can save the PDF file of your CH7 BK filing to your hard drive. Perhaps you can print a copy of the filing, send it certified mail to Wells Fargo legal department informing them of their violation and also email the legal dept at the same time with an attachment of the filing notice telling them you will ask for sanctions in BK court if they don't immediately release the funds.

Yeah, first thing Monday morning I plan on being in touch with Wells Fargo's legal dept. I do have a PDF file copy of our filing paperwork that I can print out if need be. The first thing I'll need to do is find out exactly what the circumstances were for Fargo to put a lien on my accounts before moving foward.

[dingdong]

I found this, you might want to read it.

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Bankruptcy-Law-909/2008/10/chapter-7-bank-account.htm

[dingdong]

Here is some more info on the subject.

http://www.whitecase.com/files/Publication/9461284c-e8d3-49d3-b844-69db5bced5df/Presentation/PublicationAttachment/23e1d8f6-44d4-4ead-a288-6ef279cf9608/article_Hollander_Pratts_Bankruptcy_Court_Punishes.pdf

http://bklaw.com/bankruptcy-blog/2009/03/bank-accounts-freeze/

[dingdong]

I would also log into PACER look at your exemptions and see if your attorney exempted the cash, if not, you might want to see if your attorney can move some exemptions around to exempt it.


From what I have read it looks like you might have to wait until either the Trustee sees that the funds are exempted or abandons the asset, but 14,000.00 is a lot of moolah and can make a trustee drool.

[walkthaplank]

Sorry to threadjack (and even in the wrong forum), does this only happen in CH7 cases, or will your bank do this in a CH13 filing?

To the OP, sorry to hear about this... I *HATE* Wells Fargo and when i use the word "HATE" it is because I cannot think of a harsher word.... ever since they had money vanish from my account with them and basically told us to pound sand. Fortunately my ex-wife was a real shrew and got the money out of them.... and we promptly opened up an account at another bank.

[Doghouse]

From what I have read it looks like you might have to wait until either the Trustee sees that the funds are exempted or abandons the asset, but 14,000.00 is a lot of moolah and can make a trustee drool.

I had over 11,000 in my account when I filed. All of it was covered using California's wildcard exemption.

[Floridagail]

Please keep us posted on WellsFargo . Is your attorney filing some papers to get the funds released.

[Planetary]

OK, here's an update on my case after a *really* long day's worth of trying to get this resolved.

First off, I want to thank "DingDong" for linking those pair of articles earlier in this thread. They really proved valuable in directing our attorney in the right direction as to how to approach getting our accounts un-frozen.

So the first thing I did was bypass our attorney on directly contacted our BK case Trustee via e-mail (his e-mail addy was on our case paperwork) explaining in clear, concise terms not just the situation, but also including the links to those articles as well as explaining the dire situation we're in as we basically have a couple hundred bucks cash to last us until who-knows-when due to all our money being tied up in the bank account lein. We also made a brief comment about how there's some evidence our attorney not only didn't warn us this may happen but that he may have botched our BK paperwork as well.

The Trustee must have immediately forwarded our e-mail with some comments of his own as our attorney knew we had contacted the Trustee and this morning was aggressively helping us do an ammendment to our Chapter 7 paperwork this morning and made sure the paperwork was in the Trustee's office before close of business today. he seemed pretty confident we'll get *all* our money in our accounts unfrozen fairly quickly, but we'll see.

Our attorney still insists he's never seen or heard of this sort of thing happening, especially with Wells Fargo.

[Floridagail]

THanks for update, I still am in shock that it happen to you. I hope you can get your money back soon. I hope the bankruptcy judge in your case also gets involved and some action is taken against the bank.