Ch 13 discharge

[Nicollette]

Just out of curiousity, does anyone know about how long it takes to get a discharge from a Ch 13, once your last plan payment is made? Im just curious because I have about 9 months left in my Ch 13.

[LaurieM]

Once the plan has been completed, the trustee will have the judge sign an order to send to your employer stopping payroll deductions (if that's the way you pay). Anything taken off your paycheck with exceeds the 60 month plan will be refunded to you by the chapter 13 trustee (sometimes an additional payment or two comes off pay checks before the court can adminitratively get the payments stopped by sending your employer an order signed by the judge). Our chapter 13 trustee won't issue a final report to the judge until/unless all outstanding checks disbursing payments to the creditors have been cashed by the creditors. Once that occurs, the trustee issues a final report to the judge. The judge then issues an order directing the chapter 13 participant to sign a certification that there either are or are not domestic support orders in place and that has to be filed with the court once signed. Also, your 2nd credit counseling course must have been completed and the certificates filed with the court. After all that occurs, the discharge notice will be issued. We had one client whose discharge took months and months to come through simply because one of the creditors had not cashed one of the final checks sent to them by the trustee. We had to ride the trustee to follow up with the creditor to get it moving in the end.

[Flamingo]

Here was our timeline...we were Old Law and bought out of our Plan early via refinancing in early 4/06. In early 6/06 we received a letter from the Trustee stating what would be done as to our discharge, final payments will be mailed to creditors and each creditor has to return a signed form that they have been paid in full, and that an audit of our Plan would be done; it indicated that iff all went well, we could expect a discharge in about 60 days or so. Our discharge was dated the end of 8/06. Since you will be making payments to the end of your Plan, expect it to take at least 90 days for discharge. When you make your last payment, contact your attorney that you have done so and he/she will clue you in as to details. As indicated above, there could be issues that cause delays but normally it takes about 90 days from your last payment.