Tennessee Lock-Box

[shipo]

For those of y'all in a Chapter 13 who have the "privileged" of mailing a certified check or money order to a lock-box in Tennessee, I feel for you. In my case, while I would not have been in favor of a wage assignment from my company, I would have been happy with an auto-debit against my bank; that would have made life a lot easier. But no, the rule was, certified check or money order and mail it to Tennessee, every freakin' month. Grrr.

I put up with that for a year and then decided to try something different; I reasoned I had online banking via a major U.S. bank, and when money is being sent to an entity which did not have electronic capabilities, my bank would simply print and mail a check to the Payee. I had a check sent to myself and took a look at it, and it looked virtually indistinguishable from any other check produced by a bank, so I took a chance and sent my next payment to my Trustee's lock-box in Tennessee via online banking. I never heard any complaint, so I scheduled the next 47 or so payments in the Bill Pay section of my app, and never looked back. For the remainder of my 60-month Chapter 13, all payments were conveniently made from my bank and the Trustee never complained once.

If any of y'all are tired of getting money orders and such, you might want to give it a try.

[sophieanne]

And you can also see if you're trustee accepts payments from TFS. You pay a small fee each month and it takes 5 days for your payment to process...but it was very reliable and the trustee's seem to like it.

[justbroke]

I sent my last payment that way and the Chapter 13 Trustee rejected it and mailed me the check! They only want ACH or certified funds. Ouch!

[shipo]

I sent my last payment that way and the Chapter 13 Trustee rejected it and mailed me the check! They only want ACH or certified funds. Ouch!

My reasoning, flawed or otherwise, was the checks sent directly to payees are as good as a certified check; the money from those checks is frozen in your account the moment the check goes out. Fortunately they accepted nearly 50 payments that way.

[karna68]

I've sent payments that way. I currently have it deducted from my pay though and it's fine with me.