We had enough exemptions to cover everything including our tax refund. Well, that is until our trustee decided she wanted all of my earned but unpaid income. I get paid once a month and we filed right before payday. So that was a whole months worth of pay. Well we had enough exemptions to cover all but around $357. So we thought we would be okay. $357 wouldn't be worth our trustee's time would it? Well, our trustee managed a nice trick. We had done a balance transfer from one card to another 2 1/2 months prior to filing. She decided that that was a preferential payment and went after the $2500 from that creditor. That made our $357 worth her time and effort. So our income tax refunds when straight to her (and almost all of our refund was from child tax credits); all $2,280. We had to wait around for her to decide to send us our exempt portion. We had already agreed to buy a vehicle we desperately needed (our older vehicle wasn't big enough or safe for our children to ride in - '83 S-10 pickup).

Luckily the trustee sent us our exempt portion, the seller waited for the check. Though I had to go through the embarrassment of explaining our situation. The trustee kept the $357. The trustee's cut of the just over $3000 she collected was over $1000.

It actually ended up being a kind of good thing. Since only a few of our creditors filed proof of claims and the two largest were our student loans. Our student loans got what amounted to the equivalent of a couple months payment from our trustee. We were also making our regular payments. So while it doesn't shorten the eternity we will be paying on those loans much. Every little bit helps.

The above is essential the response I made in this thread; http://www.bkforum.com/showthread.php?t=24457

I talk a bit about becoming an asset case here; http://www.bkforum.com/showthread.php?t=12433
And


I mention the return of my exempt portion of the return here; http://www.bkforum.com/showthread.php?t=13063http://www.bkforum.com/showthread.php?t=17932