Creditors missing from Schedule E/F

[imtryingtho]

I am incredibly frustrated. We love our attorney, but whoever his paralegal is SUCKS. We got our petition and schedule to review before filing and there are so many errors! An entire bank account with $10,000 is missing from the bank accounts listed, but even worse is 5-6 creditors are missing. It’s agitating when I was painstakingly detailed and clear with all of our documentation. I had even attached a spreadsheet of all of our creditors and amounts owed. It seems like someone just pulled our credit reports and listed those and didn’t bother to pay any attention to detail. Some accounts are in collections and not on our credit reports, but I had given them statements for those so there’s no reason for them to be forgotten.

Anyone else have this situation? I’m trying to keep the faith, but it feels like someone just threw this document together with no concern over accuracy. This is our life. 😞 As if it’s not stressful enough to prepare for this.

[muneco]

Welcome to the forum! If you have not yet filed it should be an easy process to have your attorney fix the missing information. Before signing the petition make sure you carefully go over each and every page to ensure every entry is accurate. When you sign the petition you are certifying that you read the document and everything is correct.

[imtryingtho]

Welcome to the forum! If you have not yet filed it should be an easy process to have your attorney fix the missing information. Before signing the petition make sure you carefully go over each and every page to ensure every entry is accurate. When you sign the petition you are certifying that you read the document and everything is correct.

Thanks! Yeah I’m glad I was detailed and kept a spreadsheet so that reviewing the petition was a million times easier. We have so many creditors that I knew I had to look carefully, but I never expected this many to be missing! It just makes me feel like they’re not taking it seriously.

[muneco]

Our attorney's paralegal initially left a couple of our creditors off the list. I contacted our attorney and expressed our frustration with the lack of attention to detail. I also had provided a completely detailed and accurate spreadsheet. The attorney must have scolded the paralegal and after that our paperwork was handled without further errors. I believe a lot of the attorneys' staffs pull a credit report and only go by that. The trouble is that many filers have utility accounts, unpaid medical bills and etc. that are not listed on credit reports. One additional thing that I can't stress enough is to develop a budget for monthly expenses that is realistic and is not so "tight" that it is a challenge every month to have enough money available. One category that a lot of filers overlook is house maintenance. Items such as hvac filters, water softener salt, landscaping, repairs, and etc. add up fast. We listed $150 per month for housing maintenance and we were not challenged by the trustee. We were able to list our cell phones, home phone, internet, burglar alarm fee, OnStar for both vehicles, satellite radio and tv cable without challenge. If your monthly income is adequate, I would suggest you get very good medical insurance for your family and term life insurance. Because I had several term life insurance policies in effect for over 20 years the trustee allowed the policies without issue. The best thing we did, however, was to purchase a new vehicle a month before we filed our plan. I asked our attorney if we were allowed to do so as we only had about 18 months left of car payments and once the car was paid off we would have been required to pay the car payment amount to the unsecured creditors for 42 months. He stated that he was not allowed, by law, to tell us to incur any debt. He stated that it was not illegal and if we did buy a new car to just make sure the car was not a luxury model and the monthly payments were under $500. It made more sense for us to pay our money towards a new car rather than to unsecured creditors.

[imtryingtho]

We actually got me a new SUV a year ago for this very reason! It's a large car payment, but my husband's car is paid off so our attorney doesn't think it will be a big deal. Our insurance is through my husband's work and is pretty good, but we still have a lot of medical expenses. We hit our out of pocket max 2 years in a row, so we will be providing a lot of documentation on medical expenses. What district did you file in? We are in Western.

[muneco]

We also filed in the western district. Texas is a very BK friendly state when it comes to homestead property and vehicles.

[imtryingtho]

Good to know! I had seen your message but I can’t respond to messages yet since I’m a junior member 😢

[justbroke]

Welcome to the Forum. Be advised that there are a number of attorneys that use a tri-merge credit bureau report to automatically populate the creditors into their system (usually BestCase or Bankrupter). If a creditor doesn't appear, they'll actually miss them on the schedules. Whether or not the office personnel then go and match what you had in a spreadsheet to what is being reported, is another story.

The reason that they give you a copy of the petition before signing is so that you can review and make sure there are no material errors. They happen for a whole list of reasons (including what I mentioned above).

I know it's frustrating but hang in there. Keep asking the right questions and examining your documents without just signing blindly.

[shipo]

The best thing we did, however, was to purchase a new vehicle a month before we filed our plan. I asked our attorney if we were allowed to do so as we only had about 18 months left of car payments and once the car was paid off we would have been required to pay the car payment amount to the unsecured creditors for 42 months. He stated that he was not allowed, by law, to tell us to incur any debt. He stated that it was not illegal and if we did buy a new car to just make sure the car was not a luxury model and the monthly payments were under $500. It made more sense for us to pay our money towards a new car rather than to unsecured creditors.

My single largest mistake before filing was not following my attorney's advice and buy a new car; instead I soldiered on with my (then) 14 year old Honda Accord; in my fourth year of my Chapter 13 rust and other corrosion got the better of it and it would have required over $3,000 to put back on the road. If I'd followed her advice, I would have had a three year old Corolla (or some such) which would probably still have been under warranty. That seriously sucked for a couple of months and completely wiped out my meager savings.

[imtryingtho]

Thanks everyone for your responses! I was surprised that our attorney got the revised petition to us by the end of the day (turnaround has been pretty slow with him lately, but I imagine the pandemic has him working more). I'm about to review it now.

We also just got our payment schedule document and it says we will be able to keep any tax refunds under $2000. That would be nice!

[imtryingtho]

Welcome to the Forum. Be advised that there are a number of attorneys that use a tri-merge credit bureau report to automatically populate the creditors into their system (usually BestCase or Bankrupter). If a creditor doesn't appear, they'll actually miss them on the schedules. Whether or not the office personnel then go and match what you had in a spreadsheet to what is being reported, is another story.

The reason that they give you a copy of the petition before signing is so that you can review and make sure there are no material errors. They happen for a whole list of reasons (including what I mentioned above).

I know it's frustrating but hang in there. Keep asking the right questions and examining your documents without just signing blindly.

Yeah, what frustrated me was we had a LONG meeting with our attorney a couple weeks ago going through all of the accounts he had for us and verifying nothing was missing. We had to remove one that ended up being my husband's family's Kohl's account... we're a bit worried the card will be shut down if we don't remove him as an authorized user, but we're not sure how to bring the subject up with his family. So anyway, it seems like whoever put the document together wasn't using the computer program the attorney pulled up on the call.