Car repossessed & stay lifted, can I get it back?

[eor]

We originally intended to file Ch 7 and give up our car which was repo'd shortly before we filed. To get more time in our house, we decided to file Ch 13 instead and filed in Oct. We didn't really realize that the car could be kept at that point, we were too stressed out to think it through thoroughly and we had told the attorney when discussing Ch 7 that we would give it up, so he didn't discuss with us the possibility of keeping it. The stay was lifted for the car in Nov.

We just found out the bank still has the car and is trying to file an insurance claim for some collision damage with our insurance company, but the claim hasn't gone through & damage has not been fixed yet.

My question is, is there a possibility we could get the car back at this point and include it in our Ch 13 repayment? We only owed $2500 at time of repo which is probably $1k less than it's worth if the collision damage is fixed.

Any advice is greatly appreciated, thank you, I'm trying to get an educated opinion before wasting $300 per hour to discuss it with our attorney if there's no chance we can get it back anyway.

[justbroke]

If they already have received relief from the automatic stay, you're pretty much toast, since that would be considered res judicata (or already adjudicated) as far as their right to repossess it. Also, since that happened more than 10 days ago, you can't go back and have the Order on that motion, vacated. (Generally speaking, you only have 10 days to challenge an Order entered by the court. If it's a question of law or something that's appeal-able, there are also limits on the time allowed to pass before bringing such a claim.)

Unfortunately, you waited too long to make this decision.

Now, you could try to work with the Bank to recover the vehicle, because they'd rather have money in the long run anyhow. I would still do this through your attorney. Whether the Bank will entertain this or not, is specific to your individual case.

You really need to think about your approach given the information provided. People get really attached to their vehicles, but you need to assess whether recovering the repossessed vehicle makes financial sense.