Wife runs daycare

[mlmom5]

Here is my situation im $40,000 in unsecured debt, i dont have equity in my house, i own three cars, dont owe anything on them they are woth about 20,000. Im going to file chapter 13 because i cant lose my cars, i need all three of them. My wife will not be filing with me, she runs a home daycare, she brings home about $2500 a month, but after all the expenses, and right offs, she only shows about $3,000 profit when we file taxes. Do i have to count here salary for the means test? or how does this work?

[LadyInTheRed]

A spouse's income is included in the means test. What the non-filing does not contribute to the household is then subtracted. Things get more compicated when income is from self employment.

Make appointments for free consults with a few experienced bankruptcy attorneys.

[keepsmiling]

Keep an open mind about that 13...you are probably making a mistake on those cars, leaving yourself open to MAJOR headaches. Keep reading. There's more than one way to get thru a bk.

[LadyInTheRed]

I copied keepsmiling's first post and the resulting discussion into mlmom5's other thread: http://www.bkforum.com/showthread.ph...apter-13/page2

If we keep the car discussion in that thread and the spouse's income question in this thread, I think the discussion will go more smoothly. Thank you for your cooperation!

[hmchem]

My wife and I are approaching the end of our Chapter 13 after 3 years (approx. 6 months to go). She keeps children in our home and when we filed we had to come up with profit and loss statements for the 2 years prior to filing. It doesn't matter what your final income looks like on your federal taxes. Your total income from the business will be taken into consideration. I had always done a good job of tracking the income she made so it was not to hard to put together. The key is if you keep good records for the expense of the business this can help reduce your income and change the amount you have to pay the trustee. Since we don't have a lot of expenses for the business this didn't help me much. Given you all are not filing together I am not sure how this will affect the outcome of your means test.