7. Gifts
List all gifts or charitable contributions made within one year immediately preceding the commencement of this case except ordinary and usual gifts to family members aggregating less than $200 in value per individual family member and charitable contributions aggregating less than $100 per recipient. (Married debtors filing under chapter 12 or chapter 13 must include gifts or contributions by either or both spouses whether or not a joint petition is filed, unless the spouses are separated and a joint petition is not filed.)
I've had lengthy discussions about this with my attorney. He's also an active trustee.
I have to include this in my response to the gifts question - About $7k total to 4 family members over 14 transactions for living expenses, college expenses, birthday gifts, holiday gifts over the previous year.
When the trustee sees this the first question he'll ask is were you doing this prior to the last year. I'll have to answer Yes. Then he'll want to know when I was solvent. That was many years ago according to the solvency test. I don’t know. At that point he can go back 6 years or when I was solvent looking for gifts. This might be a NY state law kicking in.
I’m working on trying to figure out when I was solvent which was probably 3 years ago and then get bank statements back that far looking for gifts to do a damage assessment.
This is going to be a big pot of gold for the trustee personally as well as the creditors. Legally he could go after the gift recipients, threaten sue if they don’t pay back the money. The process locally is to first ask the debtor to pay and avoid involving the gift recipients. The negotiation will start from there. The recipients are elderly, in college, don’t have the money, it will be very difficult to get the money from them, the debtor was making a lot of money when he did this, it’s the trustees burden to prove how far back I was insolvent, so will you settle for 50 cents on the dollar. It will probably wind up at 80 cents in the dollar.
My situation is very unusual. Lot’s of debt but also lot’s of exempt assets. If I can get discharged and only pay $10-20K that’s still outstanding for me. My attorney said there is no cause for concern about my whole case being dismissed. I’ll just have to settle this issue.
There is one angle my attorney is pursuing that makes ALL this go away. He’s trying to find law or cases that support my 401k is outside the bankruptcy estate. If he can then my 401k is not a BK exemption and can be included in the solvency test and I was solvent when I did the gift giving and therefore no fraudulent conveyances occurred. If anyone has any insight into that it would be greatly appreciated.
List all gifts or charitable contributions made within one year immediately preceding the commencement of this case except ordinary and usual gifts to family members aggregating less than $200 in value per individual family member and charitable contributions aggregating less than $100 per recipient. (Married debtors filing under chapter 12 or chapter 13 must include gifts or contributions by either or both spouses whether or not a joint petition is filed, unless the spouses are separated and a joint petition is not filed.)
I've had lengthy discussions about this with my attorney. He's also an active trustee.
I have to include this in my response to the gifts question - About $7k total to 4 family members over 14 transactions for living expenses, college expenses, birthday gifts, holiday gifts over the previous year.
When the trustee sees this the first question he'll ask is were you doing this prior to the last year. I'll have to answer Yes. Then he'll want to know when I was solvent. That was many years ago according to the solvency test. I don’t know. At that point he can go back 6 years or when I was solvent looking for gifts. This might be a NY state law kicking in.
I’m working on trying to figure out when I was solvent which was probably 3 years ago and then get bank statements back that far looking for gifts to do a damage assessment.
This is going to be a big pot of gold for the trustee personally as well as the creditors. Legally he could go after the gift recipients, threaten sue if they don’t pay back the money. The process locally is to first ask the debtor to pay and avoid involving the gift recipients. The negotiation will start from there. The recipients are elderly, in college, don’t have the money, it will be very difficult to get the money from them, the debtor was making a lot of money when he did this, it’s the trustees burden to prove how far back I was insolvent, so will you settle for 50 cents on the dollar. It will probably wind up at 80 cents in the dollar.
My situation is very unusual. Lot’s of debt but also lot’s of exempt assets. If I can get discharged and only pay $10-20K that’s still outstanding for me. My attorney said there is no cause for concern about my whole case being dismissed. I’ll just have to settle this issue.
There is one angle my attorney is pursuing that makes ALL this go away. He’s trying to find law or cases that support my 401k is outside the bankruptcy estate. If he can then my 401k is not a BK exemption and can be included in the solvency test and I was solvent when I did the gift giving and therefore no fraudulent conveyances occurred. If anyone has any insight into that it would be greatly appreciated.
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