Surrendered house can they amend secured claim....more

[puggymoo]

Bar date is Sunday March 6th. Can the lender for our house amend secured claim after the bar date. Please keep in mind that the plan was confirmed with no objection and they were not included as part of the payment only surrendered. I have asked my attorney and paralegal and get different answers.

[justbroke]

A claim can always be amended. The problem is only with filing a "new" claim after the bar date. There is some argument that a secured claim can't be "converted" into an unsecured claim by amendment, unless the original claim had both a secured portion and unsecured portion. This is why some secured lenders file a secured claim for all but $1 and file $1 as unsecured... to facilitate amendment later.

What are you worried about anyhow? If you surrendered the home, the worst is that they get an unsecured claim on the deficiency and get paid from the unsecured pool. That never affects your DMI calculation and only in rare cases, would it even affect your payment to the Trustee.

Again, what are you worried about? I'm sure your attorney explained that unsecured creditors -- of which your mortgage creditor would be -- only get what's left from the DMI. If you're in a 0% plan, the lender would get... $0.00.

[puggymoo]

We are in a 100% plan so yes I'm worried. All we have is unsecured debt. two other loans are being paid for outside of the plan. If they come after us or can amend the claim it would be about 110K that is alot to worry about.

[justbroke]

Even in a 100% plan, that doesn't mean that you actually have to pay 100% of the claims. A 100% plan just means that you have enough disposable monthly income (DMI) to pay 100% of the allowed unsecured claims. Should the total amount of the allowed unsecured claims increase, you may not necessarily still be in a 100% plan. Understood?

What could affect whether you must be in a 100% plan, is the so-called "Chapter 7 liquidation value" of your bankruptcy estate. In other words, you're keeping property of have other "non-exempt" assets that would have been liquidated a the Chapter 7.

Your attorney could fight the "amendment" to an unsecured claim, as a "new" claim and get the claim disallowed.

I wouldn't worry about it at this point.