Filing Ch 7 individually ; joint income tax refund, exempt 100% or less?

[phoenyx]

I'm filing Chapter 7 individually. None of my debts (business debts) are in my wife's name whatsoever, so we aren't including her on the bankruptcy to keep her credit record clean.

We are getting several large tax refunds, since I'm filing my 2005-2007 returns just now. All of the income, deductions, and credits are attributable to me -- the only affect my wife has on the returns is being able to take the married, filing jointly deduction -- rather than the married, filing single deduction.

For the purpose of the bankruptcy, is the entire tax refund considered my asset -- or is it split 50/50? Again all of it's logically attributable to me, but I'm not sure how they handle it.

I'm in a non-community property state, Michigan.

If they consider it to be entirely my asset, it looks like I'll go slightly over what I can exempt under the federal wildcard exemption. If they consider it 50/50, I'll be able to exempt all of the refunds under the federal wildcard exmpetion.

Note: I am filing through an attorney, but am holding all my small questions for him until just before filing. I don't want to bug him every day with short questions, I figure that would either annoy him or up the bill. Just wondering what to look forward to on this so we can plan for it.

[butterflywings]

I am in NY filing BK individually. Like you none of my debt is in my husband's name. My lawyer told me Monday that our trustee in this kind of situation would go after only 1/2 of the refund since the other 1/2 is the asset of my husband who is not filing. My husband is the only person who works as I am a homemaker so even though the refund is based soley on his income it is still half of my asset.

Now this is how MY trustee handles it. Ive heard in other districts that the trustee takes a percentage of who's income the refund is based on etc and in other districts refunds based on EIC and CTC are fully exempt. Also, some trustees don't go after refunds of any amount while others will go after any amount. YMMV Only your lawyer can tell you how your trustee will proceed.