Our chapter 13 journey has started

[Carmella]

My unsecured cards got whatever amount they requested. No interest or other fees after they filed.

There is a trustee fee, but I don't really know how that works.

[notreallyme]

Not much to report this week. A couple more creditors submitted claims - Capital one reported 3 of 4 credit cards, but not the auto loan yet.

Several creditors have reported May as 30 days late but June included in BK on my credit report. I'll have to do some research - my bankruptcy was filed in May - I didn't think they could report May as late then included in bankruptcy as of June. They should be included in bankruptcy as of May. Doesn't matter much, but my credit score took a big hit from this - dropped 30 points when bankruptcy was reported in May and another 40 points when 11 late payments showed up on my credit report. If it doesn't clean up, I will file disputes the next time I am trying to get credit which won't be for years hopefully.

At the 341 hearing, the trustee said confirmation might be at the end of July, so wasn't expecting any disbursement this month. If there were disbursements, I would have expected them to be for the mortgage. Instead they made one payment for our other car loans. I thought order was 1) ongoing mortgage, 2) priority like taxes, 3) secured then 4) unsecured.

[shipo]

Don't bother with disputes, they won't help you gain even a single point. The fact is, having a bankruptcy on your record trumps all other data points; my recommendation is to simply ride things out from here and start rebuilding your credit.

[notreallyme]

Nothing to report this week. No new creditors reported, no new pacer documents. 2.5 weeks until claims bar date.

I know a lot of claims will submit in the next two weeks, but will be nice if some of them don't. Right now unsecured is about 30,000 less than we expected and secured is 9,500 less. Capital one still hasn't submitted our auto loan, but I am sure they will. If they don't, we will submit a claims form on their behalf as we want to keep the car. Book value is twice what we owe on it and I need it to get back and forth to work. If unsecured stay where they are now, that would mean either $500 less in our plan payment (30,000/60) or if plan payment stays the same, ending the plan over a year early Either would be really nice. One can hope at least.

[notreallyme]

Nothing much happened this week - capital one finally submitted the claim on the car. Lot of claims not submitted yet. Filed claims are still about 30,000 below what I expected when we submitted. 9 days to claims bar date.

[notreallyme]

Not a lot of actual movement this week. Yesterday (7/26) was the claims bar date. Looked at NDC today - I hope it is up to date - it says it was updated yesterday. About 35% of the unsecured debt dollars haven't been submitted. (This is based on what I expected which is lower than what was included in the plan).

So good news on the plan. Trustee is collecting 6% but 10% is built into the plan. Submitted debt is a lot less than we expected. So either plan term can go to less than 45 months or plan payment can go down $600-$800 per month. Trustee is using a TILL rate of 5.5% on the secured debt. So down considerably on vehicle and up a little on the other for an overall savings on interest.

Used PACER for the first time. I have been using the RSS feed trick that someone pointed out (Sorry - can't recall the user to provide proper credit) and finally saw some documents. Pulled them down from PACER - one was an amended plan - not sure what the amendment was as the monthly payment didn't change nor did what was included / excluded from our initial petition. Second was setting the date for our confirmation hearing of 8/23/22 and a final plan objection date of 8/09/22.

Be interested to see what payments the trustee makes this month - last month they only paid to the secured creditors so our mortgage is falling further behind.

[flashoflight]

Login into PACER, query your case, go to Claims Register, make sure "view claims summary report" box is checked. It should be 10 cents. Save the output.

[notreallyme]

Login into PACER, query your case, go to Claims Register, make sure "view claims summary report" box is checked. It should be 10 cents. Save the output.

Thank you - I just did that and saw two claims here that weren't on the NDC site yet. One is legitimate and one is total bs. It was a 2,000 loan that was paid off in February 2022 and they have submitted a claim for $16,308.62. I have printed off the pay-off letter and they payment history. This was a temporary very high interest loan that I paid off immediately. The claim they submitted makes it look like I had never made a payment and they are projecting out a year from the loan date with high interest rate. Total garbage, but I am a packrat so I have downloads of all of the payment receipts and they payoff letter.

There a total of 30 claims on the PACER site. The first 28 match up exactly with both claim number and claim amount with what is on NDC. One matches to what I expected, so I will give my lawyer a heads up to object to this claim.

[Carmella]

That's great you have the paperwork that you paid off the loan! I am glad you checked PACER to find out this information.

[notreallyme]

I am glad I found this forum. I have been following the advice of the senior members and it really helps out. I am refreshing my rss feed daily and looking for anything on my case. Much cheaper to only look at PACER for specific documents. Going to keep it below the $30 per month. This month up to $2.40. Also good to hear of other's experiences on how their case progresses and to see that several have had successful plans with early payoffs.

For good or bad I am ocd on many items (can't tell from looking at my desk) but I have everything in a spread sheet and download pdf's of every receipt. I've been able to match up everything on NDC to what I gave my lawyer for our original submission. Some were sold off to junk debt collectors "jdc", which is their loss since I am in a 100% plan. I know some of the jdcs buy for pennies on the dollar and then hope you get dismissed so they can add in back interest. Original creditors would have been better off keeping the debt and getting their full payment. Been tracking what is submitted versus what I expect versus what our lawyer had in our plan. Our original plan was overstated as some creditors used different names on the different credit reports, so that already gave me some cushion from double counting. Now, what was submitted is 20% below what I expected and 27% below what we submitted in the plan for the unsecured. Can't wait until the plan is confirmed and the trustee starts making payments.

Even have a spread sheet of all of the accounts and the current balances and till rates by claim. I can download the NDC ledger each month and track my outstanding balances. I now it is anal, but it will help me cope with our tight budget from the plan payment amount to see balances drop each month and know each month we are getting closer to the end. With a 100% plan, hoping for a raise next year so that my take-home can go up. Our payment won't increase so it will be an increase for us so I can start building up an emergency fund. Luckily cars are all 2017 and in good shape, but house could use some work - in the next couple of years needs new paint.

For those of you who are bored or also spread sheet monkey's like me, I have probably given enough percentages and dollars that if you are bored you can back into my claim amounts and monthly payment.

[Carmella]

notreallyme you are so organized. I was not. You are right about this forum I wish I found it before we filed!

I have no idea if all the claims were correct. I didn't know which collection agency went with which credit card. You will shutter when you read this. I shredded most of the stuff. I only had the most recent information when we filed and like I said I didn't know which agency bought off which credit card!

I had a feeling ours was going to end early that not everyone filed, but I had no organization to figure it out. I thought it would end maybe two months early not almost a year early so I was pleasantly surprised!

[notreallyme]

A lot happened in the last two weeks, but nothing that was shocking. After this, things should be pretty smooth - will be on a tight budget but will know what to expect.

Two weeks ago (8/8/22) our lawyer objected to the incorrect proof of claim. We provided him evidence that the loan had been paid off in February. Creditor had until 8/22/22 to respond and did not. However, today (8/24) they filed to withdraw their claim.

No one objected, so plan was confirmed on on 8/23/2022. Was able to download the order today. Only interesting thing is it mentions reporting annual bonus and tax refunds. However, our bonus and last tax refund were included in the six months of income used to determine our disposable income, so our payment was already more than sufficient to pay off less than 60 months. Around 80% of what we expected on unsecured actually filed. This, with the fact that our filed plan double counted some debts means we should pay all of the creditors at 100% closer to 48 months than to the plan of 60 months. Total approved unsecured is 70% of our original submission when we filed. Will adjust our withholdings so that there is very little refund next year.

Now just waiting to see what the trustee pays at the end of the month. For June and July he just paid our secured car loans, so mortgage and HELOC kept falling farther behind. If I read things correctly, the order of payment should be on-going mortgage than priority tax then secured and unsecured last.

Our HELOC claim has too large of a monthly payment - the bank's lawyer screwed up, but since he is a chapter 7 trustee that our lawyer works with a lot, we chose not to argue. The HELOC is adjustable rate, so a few more interest rate increases and the payment will be about right. In the meantime, any extra we pay will just reduce the balance. Since there is a balloon payment in six years, this will actually help us out.

Wish I would have filed a long time ago. Of course, wish even more that I hadn't made bad decisions and got into this position.

[flashoflight]

Our HELOC claim has too large of a monthly payment - the bank's lawyer screwed up, but since he is a chapter 7 trustee that our lawyer works with a lot, we chose not to argue. The HELOC is adjustable rate, so a few more interest rate increases and the payment will be about right. In the meantime, any extra we pay will just reduce the balance. Since there is a balloon payment in six years, this will actually help us out.

My HELOC payment was too large as well because I used the last statement, which was almost a year old due to being behind. The bank took my number in the proof of claim as-is LOL. Rates were going down when I filed so the payment should have been lower. The real minimum dropped a lot after filing due to COVID. Because I have a 1% plan, I had no incentive to correct the HELOC payment. I used the larger HELOC payment to justify a bigger mortgage payment on the refinance to give the unsecured creditors as little as possible once again. As I learned long after filing, the lender knew what was the real minimum interest only payment and used that number rather than the proof of claim number. That meant the excess was used to pay down the arrears.

Even back in 2020, I was terrified that my 4.25% HELOC rate was going back to the 6s and above sooner rather than later and even worse I would also face fully amortizing payments in 2023 so I refinanced out of there. I'm so glad I have a fixed rate in the 2s. I wish you the best of luck in this current interest rate environment.

[notreallyme]

Nothing really to report this week. Thought trustee would finally start making payments as our plan was confirmed last week. We started paying in back in May. Trustee made payments 6/30, 7/31 and 8/31. However, they are only paying the secured car loans. I thought on-going mortgage was top priority for payments, but I guess not. Trustee is setting on 17,000 after his fees and car payments, but nothing has gone to our lawyer (fee included in plan), mortgage or taxes. Probably going to slow down on reporting - maybe a report after 9/30 to see what payments are made and then when we hit major milestones - mortgage caught up, cars paid off, etc.

[notreallyme]

Monthly update. It has been a month since confirmation, and trustee is now paying creditors like I expected.

Legal was included in bankruptcy - paid in full. Monthly 1st & 2nd Mortgages - monthly on-going now up to date, arrears, "gap" & fee 50% paid, secured (cars) up to date. Apparently while the trustee was sitting on my money and not making on-going mortgage, they were adding payments for June & July to "gap" with a 5% "late fee" surcharge. So I was getting charged for the trustee not making payments. I can kind of understand - they didn't want to distribute money until plan was confirmed. Filed in May, so now owed six payments (May, June, July, August, September and October - since due on 10/01/22). They put May into arrears since 5/1 was before my filing date of 5/17; , June & July into GAP; and Aug-Oct as on-going. Paid three months of secured - had made payments in June-August, so basically paid May, Sep. and Aug. No payment on small state taxes that I thought fell in the same category as secured.

Only interesting thing is trustee objected to three claims. Claims are really strange - I had accounts with these three that were charged off between 2005 & 2010. Funny thing is I also had three current accounts with them with basically the same amount as the prior accounts. So, when they filed proof of claim, they matched close to what I expected and what our attorney pulled from credit reports, so I didn't pull their submission from Pacer. Pulled those this week - they filed the old claims and not the new ones. So looks like another $4,000 is being objected to and will probably get disallowed. Trustee's argument was these were well beyond statute of limitations, so are uncollectible. Most of my monthly payment is 1rst and 2nd mortgage and secured. About 2,000 goes to unsecured - so if these objections stand, that will shorten plan by two more months. So looking at less than 4 years (I am in a 100% plan, so it is possible for early payoff).