Is unemployment considered income on means test?

[peacesoon]

It's confusing as some sites say it is..others not. The Nolo test states you can exempt if you think it's part of SSI?? We are setting up come consults with a bk attorney in the next few weeks...

Just wondering if anyone can give a certain answer. BTW, my Unemployment is set to expire the end of August. One of the other reasons we want to delay bk for a little while and hopefully keep the creditors from doing anything for awhile.

Thanks!

[music12]

the form for the means test has a spot where you can elect whether you believe it's exempt or not. the point is that for some reason the law is not clear on that so nobody knows. in the cases in which the unemployment income won't affect the result of the test, of course it won't matter. in cases where it does, then you'd elect to say its exempt and leave it up to some creditor or the trustee to object to that interpretation of the law.

since unemployment income is generally not that much, the likelihood of some creditor paying a huge amount of money to a lawyer to fight over it is small. also i think it would be crazy for a trustee to single out one case in order to contest the issue. i think they should resolve this thing via legislation. until they do it's a gray area, so gray that the forms themselves say so.

[optimistic1]

from legalconsumer.com

What's this? (From Congressional Committee Report): "Unemployment compensation is given special treatment. Because the federal government provides funding for state unemployment compensation under the Social Security Act, there may be a dispute about whether unemployment compensation is a "benefit received under the Social Security Act." The forms take no position on the merits of this argument, but give debtors the option of reporting unemployment compensation separately from the CMI calculation. This separate reporting allows parties in interest to determine the materiality of an exclusion of unemployment compensation and to challenge it. " In plain English this means, report it separately. It may not affect the result of the test. If it does, it will be a "material" issue that the debtor may want to assert.)

[music12]

maybe i was wrong thinking the trustee is unlikely to do anything. see

http://west.thomson.com/practice/bankruptcy/newsletter/2008/12/03/default.aspx