Advice please!! Still so many questions.

[carolen]

I am trying to think of everything before filing Chapter 13. If I continue to make very small payments to my 4 credit cards how long can I drag out filing. We gave my daughter a car when she graduated and never actually put it in her name mainly because of insurance. Now she is living in another city I want to get the car out of our name and into hers. Also my heloc is with Wells Fargo and one of my largest cc's also with them. I of course will be making my mortgage payments and they have been automatically taken out of checking acct. From what I have been reading
if I continue to deposit money into that acct for the purpose of the mortgage being paid they can just take the money and not put it on the mortgage?

[LadyInTheRed]

What's the value of the car? California has a pretty generous wild card exemption (around $22K) if you don't have a lot of equity in your home and use system 2. Can you exempt the car?

Wells Fargo should not be able to take any money for anything other than to make the monthly mortgage payments they are automatically taking. As a member of the FDIC, they cannot take your checking account to pay the credit card debt. However, that doesn't necessarily mean they won't try anyway and require you to fight to get the money back. To be safe, you should cancel the automatic payment and move your checking account to a different bank. Use the new bank's online bill pay to make your mortgage payment.

[carolen]

We won't be able to use the one that gives the wild card exemption...so my thought was if I could get the car in her name, put the chapter 13 off for a year by making some kind of payments to the cc's then maybe it would work. We have not been late on any payments to date. My unemployment runs out in a month and then something will have to change.

[LadyInTheRed]

It just occurred to me, you can keep non-exempt assets in a 13. The value of the car will just create a minimum that must be paid to unsecured creditors during your chap 13. I think this is the case whether you keep it in your name or transfer it to your daughter, but check with your attorney before making any transfer.