A little frustrated and don't know what to do..

[BKinOH]

[falken]

Nothing upsets a trustee a more (well a few things) than not including bonuses in your income. If you get yearly bonuses you *should* take your last bonus, or an average if you have record of what the last ones were, and include that in your income.

Trust me, I know, it sucks... my payment was $400/mo more based on quarterly bonuses that went way down right after I filed.

For the means test, you go back 6 months. To calculate your DMI for your payment you use your future earnings. Leaving it off and just saying you expect it to go down is a good way to get you in hot water.

[BKinOH]

So to make sure I understand... I would take the "bonus" amount and average it across 12 months - correct?

One other question - we get a report each month on how the bonus is looking and its already substantially lower than last year. Would that be taken into account?

The thing that bugs me is that we waited and waited, based on what our attorney was telling us, then he changes the story after everything is signed AND after he (in essence) files all the paperwork with the lower amount.

[falken]

So to make sure I understand... I would take the "bonus" amount and average it across 12 months - correct?

One other question - we get a report each month on how the bonus is looking and its already substantially lower than last year. Would that be taken into account?

The thing that bugs me is that we waited and waited, based on what our attorney was telling us, then he changes the story after everything is signed AND after he (in essence) files all the paperwork with the lower amount.

Correct, if you get a $1200 yearly bonus you would add $100/mo to your monthly income(make sure you use the after tax amount on the bonus).

If the report can give an estimate of what your next bonus will be I don't see why you couldn't argue you should be able to use the lower value.

One thing you can do is try to fluff up some of your expenses and then notate that you have been informed that your bonuses are expected to go down, however, your last yearly bonus amount has been divided by 12 and added in to your income.
The trustee may be more likely to ignore $100 worth of expenses he thinks is a little high if he sees that your future income is likely to be less than you wrote down (the honesty of writing down the bonus that wasn't in the standard look back may stand out as a good thing also).