Question about confirmation hearing

[cawells]

Is it a requirement that the Debtors attend a confirmation hearing if their attorney is present?

[justbroke]

Not usually. This is the best part of filing Chapter 13 through an attorney!

[cawells]

Thank you for the quick reply. I thought as much from lurking on here quite often. Our attorney seems to think otherwise, as he had our hearing rescheduled due to my DH being out of town. Our plans most recent objection was on 6/2/10. I contacted our lawyer on 6/3, and numerous times thereafter and was told every time a version of "We're working on it and will let you know what's going on shortly" On 6/15 I gave up on hearing from them but on 7/12 notified them that DH would be out of town on the day of our hearing which was SUPPOSED to be 7/20. I figured that this would give them a week to possibly tell us what was going on, let us take a look at our ammended plan, etc before the hearing took place. On 7/16 I received an email asking for copies of two missing check stubs, which I sent via email. On that very same day according to Pacer (the only way I possible know what's going on) our attorney filed a continuation with the reason being that DH was out of town and they had been unable to contact him. I think in order to contact someone you have to actually TRY to contact them. I apoligize for the rambling, but needless to say. I AM LIVID. Still haven't heard from the lawyer-learned about this on Pacer or I would think the hearing had happened yesterday!

[justbroke]

Oh, you have an objection. This is different. Since you may need to testify at the hearing on the Objection (objection hearing), you and your DH will more than likely need to be present.

Keep calling your attorney's office until they respond, or just go over there and sit in the office and wait for him/her.

Overall, and in the grand scheme of things, this is probably nothing to get too excited or worried about. Confirmation in some Districts can take a year. Confirmation in Florida is at least 5 months. Hopefully you'll work through the objection and the confirmation will come. At least in Florida, we don't count the term duration from the date of Confirmation... we count it from the date the first payment is due (30 days after filing)! So confirmation is really just a technical -- but necessary -- thing to have done.

[cawells]

Yes, luckily in Illinois all of our payments will count towards the 60 months also. When I look at it that way, it doesn't seem so bad that this keeps going on and on. On the other hand, it would be nice if our attorney would tell us these things instead of expecting us to read his mind. The hearing has been rescheduled for the 27th. I guess we'll show up then, instead of waiting to hear from the lawyer. I really thought if we needed to be there we would have been told. UGH