I'm new here and I wanted somewhere that I could kind of journal/vent my thoughts, progress, and results. I am here because we are going to be filing chapter 13 soon, well Jan 3,2022 it looks like. I thought if I establish my story it might help someone else in the future with the caveat (any information I put forth is experience with MY situation and my current state AZ so it may not apply directly to anyone else) the few discussions I did locate around the internet did help me in some capacity usually spurring questions to ask my attorney.
First, let me say coming to the decision to file a 13 is not an easy one as most people will always steer to a 7 & believe me if I could, I would but ours is necessity for a few reasons: income; house; car etc... I began looking for an attorney the first week in October after realizing I couldn't do this any more. Unlike a lot of people, I did not do any pre bk planning so everything up to my initial attorney contacts had been paid except mortgage which has been in forbearance since 12/20. I kept pushing off the inevitable which was that forbearance will end this dec & they want 37K chunk all at once. My first thought was to wait until nov then contact them to see what arrangements we could do but I realized that first week in Oct that they were unlikely to do anything much so I hunted attorney's. After speaking with about 6 of them a few things became clear: our home may cause the biggest issue with equity because 5 of the attorney's kept pushing the "value" from Zillow which I know is crap even in good times. Finally the last one I spoke to & I hired actually told me he agreed that it was crap & gave me options to prove it. The equity value was the crux of our filing because AZ current homestead exemption is 150K and zillow was reporting to where our equity would be about 254K. Now in Jan 22 AZ exemption increases to 250K so when we could file hinges on the true market value of the house. Now me being me, I went on my own and hired an appraiser thinking there is nothing better to show value. House was appraised 10/12 and we are just waiting on the report now which is supposed to get to me NLT 10/19. After we got the report, it was better but was still 26K over exemption so after speaking with attorney we decided on Jan 3rd. He has been quite good and has been steering us in the direction to best help us. He told us if we ever wanted a 2nd car that now is the time so we did that this weekend and got ourselves a brand new car with massive warranties & maintenance service. We picked the cheapest car but it was good enough for our needs.
Now in AZ everything is paid through trustee: arrears, mortgage payment, and car payments which is fine with me means I can't screw up anything lol also means our ch 13 will look crazy compared to others. I won't know our payment amount until probably December but my atty is going to give us an estimated one (subject to change)in December we can sit down with our atty and hash out a plan. I am predicting in the ballpark of 4-5K/mo. So I will update this as we move further in the process. Like I said this will serve as my journal/log of events so feel free to ask me anything.
First, let me say coming to the decision to file a 13 is not an easy one as most people will always steer to a 7 & believe me if I could, I would but ours is necessity for a few reasons: income; house; car etc... I began looking for an attorney the first week in October after realizing I couldn't do this any more. Unlike a lot of people, I did not do any pre bk planning so everything up to my initial attorney contacts had been paid except mortgage which has been in forbearance since 12/20. I kept pushing off the inevitable which was that forbearance will end this dec & they want 37K chunk all at once. My first thought was to wait until nov then contact them to see what arrangements we could do but I realized that first week in Oct that they were unlikely to do anything much so I hunted attorney's. After speaking with about 6 of them a few things became clear: our home may cause the biggest issue with equity because 5 of the attorney's kept pushing the "value" from Zillow which I know is crap even in good times. Finally the last one I spoke to & I hired actually told me he agreed that it was crap & gave me options to prove it. The equity value was the crux of our filing because AZ current homestead exemption is 150K and zillow was reporting to where our equity would be about 254K. Now in Jan 22 AZ exemption increases to 250K so when we could file hinges on the true market value of the house. Now me being me, I went on my own and hired an appraiser thinking there is nothing better to show value. House was appraised 10/12 and we are just waiting on the report now which is supposed to get to me NLT 10/19. After we got the report, it was better but was still 26K over exemption so after speaking with attorney we decided on Jan 3rd. He has been quite good and has been steering us in the direction to best help us. He told us if we ever wanted a 2nd car that now is the time so we did that this weekend and got ourselves a brand new car with massive warranties & maintenance service. We picked the cheapest car but it was good enough for our needs.
Now in AZ everything is paid through trustee: arrears, mortgage payment, and car payments which is fine with me means I can't screw up anything lol also means our ch 13 will look crazy compared to others. I won't know our payment amount until probably December but my atty is going to give us an estimated one (subject to change)in December we can sit down with our atty and hash out a plan. I am predicting in the ballpark of 4-5K/mo. So I will update this as we move further in the process. Like I said this will serve as my journal/log of events so feel free to ask me anything.
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