Selling property after discharged?

[newgirl]

How long after chap 7 discharge can a house be sold? I think I read somewhere 180 days. Is this right? If so what happens If you sell prior to that time?

[SinkingFast]

The day you file establishes your BK Estate. For Ch 7, the BK Estate exists for 180 days, if everything goes "textbook perfect", you're Discharged, and Closed in a timely manner.

If you sell before the end of the 180 days, your Trustee could swoop in and Administer the Sale. The Trustee would pay the Lender and associated costs to sell, give you your Homestead Exemption $$$'s, and take the remainder of the profits "for the benefit of your Creditors".

Just to be on the safe side, you might call your attny and ask when would be OK to sell.

Our Trustee filed a No Asset report mid March. Our attny said the Court here has to wait 30 days before they can Close a BK case. The Clerk does all Closings the last week of the month, so we had to wait 6 weeks before we Closed. We were advised to sit tight on trading vehicles until our case was "officially" Closed.

Check with your attny and see what the rules are for the Court you filed in.

[HHM]

If you sell before the end of the 180 days, your Trustee could swoop in and Administer the Sale. The Trustee would pay the Lender and associated costs to sell, give you your Homestead Exemption $$$'s, and take the remainder of the profits "for the benefit of your Creditors".

SF, I am not so sure about that, can you site a specific source. As I understand it, the BK estate is created when a debtor files BK, but is "mostly" terminated upon discharge. Reason being, the trustee is required to make all claims for non-exempt property before discharge. Upon discharge, all exempt and abandoned (abandoned property is non-exempt property that the trustee does not want) property is "legally" returned to the debtor and the BK trustee no longer has any claim to that property (except in cases of debtor fraud). The windfall claw-back provisions ONLY apply to inheritance and life insurance proceeds that are received within 180 days of discharge. Once a debtor is discharged, they can do whatever they want with property upon which the trustee has made no claim.

[Bobby'sGirl]

Is it a regional custom?

I am in the same BK district as SinkingFast and my attorney also told me wait until after 180 days out from filing to sell off a small section of my property that neighbors want to build a driveway on. That will be later this month. He says the local court is looking for test cases to establish guidelines...(wonderful for us, huh?) Glad we both made it through OK....

[JollyGG]

We wanted to sell our truck this spring and our lawyer told us we could do whatever we wanted with it after discharge.

Anyone interested in an '83 S-10 pickup with a good engine?

The price is right but the only people who call my house to answer my ad are crazy.

[BKTango]

Our attorney had told us we could sell our travel trailer (we were thinking about it) and any exempt property the trustee abandons right after discharge, but he did state that if we received any inheritence (as we are listed in several family members wills), insurance or lottery winnings within 180 days from filing we would have to contact the trustee.

[SinkingFast]

I am in the same BK district as SinkingFast and my attorney also told me wait until after 180 days out from filing to sell off a small section of my property that neighbors want to build a driveway on. That will be later this month. He says the local court is looking for test cases to establish guidelines...(wonderful for us, huh?) Glad we both made it through OK....

I'll defer to HHM on this. I think HHM is right. The 180 days applies to "windfalls".

But we got the same answer BG.

Our daughter wrecked our "family" car. Her fault. Older vehicle. Liability only coverage. So no insurance to pay for our repairs. It's more damage than the vehicle is worth. We didn't want it sitting around as a lawn ornament, our case wasn't Closed yet, and we didn't know what we could or could not do with the car as far as the Court was concerned.

I called the attny's office to see if we could sell the car just so we could get something out of it. Attny said wait until after Close. Even tho the vehicle is covered by Exemption, he wanted us to wait until our BK case was officially done.

Maybe it is something to do with the way our Court handles things, BG??!!