341 today, MA (Boston) (pro se)
Our 341 went well today.
Getting there was exciting. We had booked a taxi and gave them the addresses, but the driver seemed not to know how to get out of our neighborhood, nor where the Federal Courthouse is! Still, we arrived in good time.
In Boston there's a small general seating area, from which a Chapter 7 room and a Chapter 13 room are reached. We sat in the Chapter 7 room with others, waiting for our turn. I think we were the only pro se filers, out of the petitioners we saw. People can bring their cellphone.
The trustee was asking people what their job was, what real estate or cars they had, what they'd done with large sums of money they'd recently had, etc. He was businesslike and forthright, but also polite and informative. Decidedly non-grumpy, so far as I could see. At one point he even cracked a joke.
I got the impression that most people's papers had just had a very cursory glance. He asked us a bit about my employment, some land we sold in 2008, what one of our loans was and how much and when we'd last paid on that (kind of an insider, last paid Aug. 2008). He didn't even ask about the over $70k I had declared as accounts receivable among my assets, nor was there any hint that he'd want to see anything more.
There was one woman who had some land, where he continued her 341 because he wanted to see a copy of her deed. There was another woman who'd blown through nearly $400k in lottery winnings, where he wanted to take more time to look through her stack of paper about what she'd spent it on.
I didn't see a US Trustee taking notice of anybody's case. In some recent tax years we've had over $150k household income, and we have unsecured debts exceeding $500k, so I'd been anticipating some scrutiny, but our regular panel trustee didn't even want to see any bank statements.
I was struck that some of the other people, who had real estate, the trustee would just ask what they thought it was worth, then he'd ask about the property and its environs, he wasn't insisting that everybody get it professionally appraised.
Getting there was exciting. We had booked a taxi and gave them the addresses, but the driver seemed not to know how to get out of our neighborhood, nor where the Federal Courthouse is! Still, we arrived in good time.
In Boston there's a small general seating area, from which a Chapter 7 room and a Chapter 13 room are reached. We sat in the Chapter 7 room with others, waiting for our turn. I think we were the only pro se filers, out of the petitioners we saw. People can bring their cellphone.
The trustee was asking people what their job was, what real estate or cars they had, what they'd done with large sums of money they'd recently had, etc. He was businesslike and forthright, but also polite and informative. Decidedly non-grumpy, so far as I could see. At one point he even cracked a joke.
I got the impression that most people's papers had just had a very cursory glance. He asked us a bit about my employment, some land we sold in 2008, what one of our loans was and how much and when we'd last paid on that (kind of an insider, last paid Aug. 2008). He didn't even ask about the over $70k I had declared as accounts receivable among my assets, nor was there any hint that he'd want to see anything more.
There was one woman who had some land, where he continued her 341 because he wanted to see a copy of her deed. There was another woman who'd blown through nearly $400k in lottery winnings, where he wanted to take more time to look through her stack of paper about what she'd spent it on.
I didn't see a US Trustee taking notice of anybody's case. In some recent tax years we've had over $150k household income, and we have unsecured debts exceeding $500k, so I'd been anticipating some scrutiny, but our regular panel trustee didn't even want to see any bank statements.
I was struck that some of the other people, who had real estate, the trustee would just ask what they thought it was worth, then he'd ask about the property and its environs, he wasn't insisting that everybody get it professionally appraised.
(first 341 10/14/09, cont'd 341 
:clapping 
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