So yesterday was the dreaded day. My 341 was in Tampa FL at 2pm. I took the day off of work so I could go early and watch some of the earlier cases with my trustee. Well, I get into downtown Tampa at about 11:45 and start looking for a parking spot. There are parking garages and parking lots all over the place. I pull into one lot, pick a spot, go to the machine to pay and get my ticket, only to find that I need a $5 bill to pay for theay, or I have to use a debit card to pay. Well, I only had a $10 bill and a $20 bill on me, and theachine refused to read my card. So back to my car to drive around the maze thais downtown tampa to find another empty spot. Well, I see another spot, and just as I'm pulling in, another guy who is leaving gives me his ticket. Free parking!!! YAY!! just don't tell the parking cops. =) I go get a quick lunch at a pizza shop around thecorner from the court house and then make my way to the 341. There were only a small handful of people there when I show up and sit down in the lobby. I go into my meeting room and wait for 1 o'clock to roll around so I can see some meetings before mine. Well, at about 1:20 the trustee finally shows up and starts precedings. She had 22 cases on the docket. 20 of them were post October 17, and 2 were continuances from pre-October 17th cases. I was the only person there with no lawyer. Here is the best part though: I seemed to be the most knowledgable about the new laws of everyone in the room, debtors, attorneys, trustee, and US trustee all included. I will explain more of this later. I really didn't get to see many cases before mine because the trustee kept dismissing cases or granting continuances until February 28th. The reason: No one sent in their 2004 tax returns a week before the 341. Mind you, EVERYONE there had an attorney but me. So there is my first proof that I know more about the new laws than everyone else there. A few debtors had theirs with them, so she allowed their case to proceed as normal. She just took a few minutes to read over them before going on. No one was really grilled on anything at all until this one guy steps up and takes his oath. This gentleman was originally from Greece and barely spoke English, so there was a small language barrier there. There was two lawyers from a creditor there for his case and it got ugly pretty quick. It all revolved around transfer of vehicles right before the BK was filed, and regarding falsification of mortgage papers. That case went for a continuance. The trustee said that she wanted the chief judge there, as well as an interprator for the continuance. Later on she mentioned to the US trustee there that the Greek gentleman was almost certainly going to go to jail for fraud. Not what you want to see go on before you have your' meeting, even though I did nothing wrong. By this time it's already 3:30. My 2 o'clock 341 was getting pushed later and later. grrrr.....anyways... it's finally my turn. She turns on her tape recorder and I take my oath. She mentions that "Mr Jones (not my real name) is the ONLY person today that actually send me his tax returns on time and he is representing himself. Maybe he should go into bankruptcy law and teach these other attorneys a thing or two." Then she gave me this big smile. That certainly made me feel less nervous about the whole thing. She then asked for my December bank statement (I filed on December 29th,) and then begins her questioning of me:
State your name and address?
Is everything on your forms true to the best of your knowledge?
Do you expect any inheritence?
Do you rent or own the preoperty that you live at?
Do you own any real estate?
Did you read all the forms before signing?
Do you expect your tax return to be approximately what it was last year"
(my answer was that I will actually owe $46 this year, and she left it at that. She asked everyone else to send her their returns when they do them)
What kind of golf clubs do you own?
What kind of collectibles are these?
(I own some sports memorabilia)
She then told me that she was sending an appraiser out to my place to look at my car and at my sports collectibles. She said that the $2500 stated value of my Jeep was more than the $1000 limit for the exemption and that she needed to know if my sports memorabilia might actually be valued at more than what I claimed. This is where I stepped in, once again realizing that I know more than the trustee about the new laws. I told her that I was no using Florida exemptions. I was using federal exemptions. She said that federal exemptions can't be used in Florida. I explained that the new law has residency requirements make it so that I have to use Pennsylvania exemptions, and since Pennsylvania provides no exemptions for a vehicle or household goods and personal items, that I was allowed to use the federal exemptions. She told me that that can't be true. She's never heard of there being new residency requirements. She got on the phone and called the US trustee and asked her to come downstairs to the meeting room. When she got there she said that she knew nothing of that either. So I open up my handy-dandy file folder and pull out my copy of the new bankruptcy code. I just so happened to have the page with the new residency requirements earmarked and I pull out that page and hand it to her. She reads it and gets this weird look on her face and and up her own copy of the code and finds the corresponding page. The next words out of her mouth I: "I declare this a no asset case. You are free to go" WOOHOO!!!! I do believe that I am very happy that I filed Pro Se. Not only did I save myself about $1300 by not hiring an attorney, but it looks like the attorney may also have gotten my case dismissed like so many others did yesterday.
State your name and address?
Is everything on your forms true to the best of your knowledge?
Do you expect any inheritence?
Do you rent or own the preoperty that you live at?
Do you own any real estate?
Did you read all the forms before signing?
Do you expect your tax return to be approximately what it was last year"
(my answer was that I will actually owe $46 this year, and she left it at that. She asked everyone else to send her their returns when they do them)
What kind of golf clubs do you own?
What kind of collectibles are these?
(I own some sports memorabilia)
She then told me that she was sending an appraiser out to my place to look at my car and at my sports collectibles. She said that the $2500 stated value of my Jeep was more than the $1000 limit for the exemption and that she needed to know if my sports memorabilia might actually be valued at more than what I claimed. This is where I stepped in, once again realizing that I know more than the trustee about the new laws. I told her that I was no using Florida exemptions. I was using federal exemptions. She said that federal exemptions can't be used in Florida. I explained that the new law has residency requirements make it so that I have to use Pennsylvania exemptions, and since Pennsylvania provides no exemptions for a vehicle or household goods and personal items, that I was allowed to use the federal exemptions. She told me that that can't be true. She's never heard of there being new residency requirements. She got on the phone and called the US trustee and asked her to come downstairs to the meeting room. When she got there she said that she knew nothing of that either. So I open up my handy-dandy file folder and pull out my copy of the new bankruptcy code. I just so happened to have the page with the new residency requirements earmarked and I pull out that page and hand it to her. She reads it and gets this weird look on her face and and up her own copy of the code and finds the corresponding page. The next words out of her mouth I: "I declare this a no asset case. You are free to go" WOOHOO!!!! I do believe that I am very happy that I filed Pro Se. Not only did I save myself about $1300 by not hiring an attorney, but it looks like the attorney may also have gotten my case dismissed like so many others did yesterday.
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