Question on 13datacenter - (K)COMPLETED FUNDS TO DEBTOR

[bpokey]

Hi everyone.

In July I completed my last payment on a 5 year BK. WOOT!!! I've since had the wage attachment stopped, and have resumed paying the mortgage on my house. There's approx $1500 in over-payments sitting in the trustee account and the status has been set to (K)COMPLETED FUNDS TO DEBTOR for about 3 weeks now.

As far as I know, I've signed everything I need to sign (even the silly no child support owed doc as I don't have any kids....) and done everything I need to do.

I guess my questions from here are:
1) how long will the discharge take from this point? According to a letter from the trustee they need to do some kind of audit and submit it to the court, but how long does that take?
2) When will I be receiving the overage back?
3) When I can go and buy a car?! I've been very diligent about not applying for *ANY* credit while this whole thing was going on, but it's quickly getting to the point where I need a car. Now, instead of buying (yet another) beater that will be dead in a year or so I'd like to get a 2ish year old used sedan that will last a while.

Hold the balloons and fireworks on the discharge party - but you probably should put them on order - I hope to be needing them soon.

Thanks,
-BPokey

[lrprn]

First, a big congrats and high-fives all around for completing your 13 successfully! That's fantastic!!! Now let's tackle your questions....

1) how long will the discharge take from this point? According to a letter from the trustee they need to do some kind of audit and submit it to the court, but how long does that take?

The time it takes each trustee to complete the audit, send you any leftover funds, and let the court know all your payments have been made varies considerably from court to court.

At least in our local court, once all our Ch 13 payments were in and our trustee sent us the letter confirming all our payments were completed and we were discharged, our creditors were then notified by our trustee that they had an additional 30 days from that point to file any last-minute objections. Whether this is also the process in your local court is a good question to ask your lawyer.

Your lawyer is going to be the most reliable discharge timeline resource for you because he/she knows what the other 13 filers they have represented have experienced with your trustee. Give the office a call or send an email on Tuesday after the holiday to see what you can find out.

2) When will I be receiving the overage back?

Whatever overage is left once the trustee confirms all creditors have received their due payments is indeed yours to keep. When your trustee will send you the check in snail mail for whatever amount that might be varies from trustee to trustee - see my answer to your first question. (Fyi....if you've changed addresses since filing, do make sure the trustee's office has your current mailing address so that lovely refund check doesn't go astray!)

3) When I can go and buy a car?!

I'm assuming that you are asking when you can get a reasonable car loan to buy a car.

Start by cleaning up your credit reports first thing. You can start that right now if you haven't started already. Give yourself at least 30-60 days to get that accomplished.

Once your credit reports from all three credit agencies are clean, check your credit scores (to get the real deal credit scores, you'll have to pay Fair Issac for two of them and Experian for theirs. "Fako" scores from any other group than Fair Issac or Experian are not reliable, no matter what their advertising says).

As long as your credit reports show no lates since filing and your credit scores are high enough, most 13ers find they can get decent loan terms within a few months after your case is officially discharged. Putting down at least 10% of the car's value in cash often helps to increase the chances of good loan terms.

Hold the balloons and fireworks on the discharge party - but you probably should put them on order - I hope to be needing them soon.

I've ordered the party favors and goodies brought up from forum storage . Be sure to let us know when it's time to bring 'em out for the big celebration!

[newbie2]

Congratulations!!! Lrprn is spot on when it comes to the time frames varying by district. We are 4 months past "last payment" made and still waiting it all out. Not unusual for our district. We'll get to 5 months before we make a "what's up?" phone call :-)

Again, congratulations!!