Can I renegotiate the terms of an auto loan in a Chapter 7?

[sunkinsc]

Our 341 meeting is the first week of April and our discharge date is tentatively scheduled for June 7th, (I am assuming this discharge date since the letter fromt he court gives creditors until then to file something).


Is it possible, (or likely I should ask), to have the lender put the past due amounts on the end of the loan or give me xx number of months to catch up while in Chapter 7 or do they require it to be current with no exceptions?

And if I decide to surrender a vehicle, at what point do I have to actually surrender the vehicle to them?

[blessed]

I thought you had to be current, or get current VERY quickly... I think they can repo with only one missed payment once it's included in the bk.

It doesn't make sense that they would negotiate with you. Unless maybe you're upside down, in which case maybe you should surrender it. For them to alter the terms it would almost be like a new loan or refi, and you won't qualify with a bk.

Not sure about timeline, someone else can answer that.

[BobMango]

It really depends on the lender. In my case they were willing to advance the loan by a month to bring me current once I got it down to 30 days late.

They also agreed to lower the payment by $235 a month. This extended the loan by about 5 months but the amount owed and the interest rate was not changed. We did have to reaffirm but I was ok with that since we had considerable equity.

In terms of surrender, it depends on how they want to proceed. If your lender files for relief of stay and it is granted, they can pick it up anytime after that. If they don't file for relief, then they have to wait for discharge.

[BananaCabana]

I think every situation is very different and we asked a lawyer at one of our free consultations. They asked who our lender was and when we told them it was Chrysler Financial she laughed and basically said it would never happen with them. I know when I talked to Chrysler myself they had a program that would allow for one month deferment that they would tack on to the end of the loan but that was the only thing they would offer us.