Questions

[freshstart32]

Hi I am new to this board and we are in the process of filing and I had a couple of questions.

Right now I have paid our first $300 to our attorney so we have retained him so to speak and he has all of our paperwork and he has emailed me for the past week saying that he was in the process of drawing up a rough draft but I haven't seen it yet. Said it would be in the mail. We are more than likely filing a Chapter 13 because we are over the median income.

My questions are:

1) How long did your process take from when you retained your lawyer and gave them all the paperwork to when you had your first meeting (the 341 meeting I think is what it is called)?

2) How long has it taken most of you to pay on your Chapter 13? Or pay off your Chapter 13?

3) What does Discharged mean and when does that happen?

4) Do you only have to pay back the creditors who come forward?

[gamom02]

Welcome,
O.k. on our first meeting which was nothing more than a consultation we were told everything we needed to get together and do.Told us what our options were, and 13 was our only option. Second meeting we sat down and all paperwork was filed right then and there electronically. We got our copies before we left the office. Our fee was $2500 and was figured into the amount we pay each week to the trustee. We are a 60 month pay/weekly, but we've been it for 15months and at the 12 month mark all of our creditors who did file a claim have been paid.Only creditors who file a claim will be paid. We had about $42,000 worth of claims who never filed for theirs so they will not be paid anything at all according to our lawyer. Our lawyer says that it is not unusal for companys not to file a claim and it is just to bad for them.Their loss our gain. We are just sitting and waiting for an audit to be done on ours so they can stop taking the money out weekly. We are at 100% pay.There is hope, and we are so glad we did file, its such a relief off of us. Hang in there.

[HHM]

1. (I will let someone chime in on this one...or point you to the right link, the process of a chapter 13 is fairly straight foward and you can get that info by a simple google search).
As for how long a lawyer should take to prepare a chapter 13 filing, no more than a week assuming they have all the info. (but there are a lot of factors that go into this, i.e. case load, software, assistants, etc).

2. All chapter 13's are 60 months, UNLESS (a) you are below your state's median income (2) you can pay off your unsecured creditors 100% of what they are owed in less time than 60 months.

3. In a chapter 13, a discharge occurs when you have completed your payment plan. A discharge means you are officially OUT OF Bankruptcy.

4. Yes. You only pay those creditors who actually file a claim in your case. (assuming you properly notified the creditors).

[lrprn]

Looks like all your questions have been answers, FS32.

1. (I will let someone chime in on this one...or point you to the right link, the process of a chapter 13 is fairly straight foward and you can get that info by a simple google search).

HHM is right. Filling in the forms is pretty simple - it's gathering all the information to put on the forms that can be time-consuming. Your lawyer may be researching the latest case decisions if there's an issue in your filing as well.

Also in Ch 13, sometimes it's a big advantage to wait to file at the optimum time because of payments to creditors, changes in income, etc. Do you have any of these reasons to delay your filing?

It's perfectly fine to ask your lawyer why you haven't received the completed forms for your review and when you can expect to get them. Call or email him and ask.