Arrived a bit early (after stressing thinking we might be late..) and sat down. Our attorney showed up a few minutes later and sat with us and went over our file again. He made a few points about what the trustee may ask about. A little more about our situation.. We have 6 rental properties, our personal home, we opened a coffee shop earlier this year under an LLC, have amassed ~ 73k in cc debt. All in, we are attempting to discharge about 850k in debt. Another couple sitting next to us got called up to see the trustee and their attorney never showed.....
We are walking away from all 7 properties (including our home) and are giving back both vehicles. A note about that, we had 2 vehicle loans with our CU. I turned my gas guzzler truck the day after filing and had picked up a small suv with better mileage prior to filing. We were going to reaffirm the minivan for the wife and kids, but after a lot of non-communication from my CU, they finally told me that we had to reaffirm everything or nothing. We had no cc with them, but we did have a 5k sig loan, 19k heloc on 1 rental, and the 2 car loans (21k on the truck, 10.5 k on the minivan, 2004 model 60k miles, starting to get a bit rough around the edges and paying 340 per mo). They made my decision easy. told them we would reaffirm nothing. Went home and told my wife, "Good news honey, your going to get a new vehicle" (new to her at least).
My saint of a mother is going to buy the new van in her name, and we can get a newer van, with half the miles, much more bells and whistles for around $100 less per mo. We have the housing situation settled. We are acutally getting a new home from a builder (I'm also a realtor part time, have a full time job of 21 years) who is doing a lease purchase on a new construction house in a great area with wonderfull schools.
Anyway, we were called up to see the trustee, he asked for our ss cards and dl's. Spent a few minutes with the standard questions. Asked if the coffee shop was still open, and we said it was. It has not made a profit yet and he saw that in our paperwork. He asked if there were any assets in the coffee shop and i told him that there were loans against the coffee shop for more than the equipment would be worth sold used.
He then spent a few minutes talking (almost grilling) about two properties that I sold to my mother last year. Both are rental properties. One I bought and fixed up and sold to her for exactly what I had in it (only around 18k) and the other I sold to her for full appraised value and used that as her investment into the coffee shop. The profit was around 53k. As far as the means test, we were about 10k over, but with expenses we were well under. We spent a total of about 10 minutes with the trustee and he then said that is it. I thought he ended it a bit abruptly, but our attorney talked to us afterward and said that he was happy with the meeting.
We got an email a little later in the day from our attorney with a copy of pacer showing the trustee had declared us a no asset case. I guess we are now a member of the 60 day club...
We also had no creditors show up even tho several filed appearances. There was a guy in front of us that spent about 25 minutes in front of the trustee with what looked like several creditors. Couldn't hear what was going on, but his body language showed that he was stressing pretty bad....
I was expecting the trustee to ask for more paperwork since I felt like our case was pretty involved with the different businesses and me actually having a full time job with decent income. My attorney said after the meeting that he could ask for some additional info, but since he has ruled "no asset", I guess he is satisfied. The UST was not there. I asked our attorney about that he said that if they did not show up, they usually were not going to get involved.
As I was asking our attorney specific questions and he was answering, he snickered and said that we were much more prepared for this process than most people he sees. I guess we made it a bit easy for him since we were so prepared before ever meeting with him. He didn't have to explain the whole process, just specific stuff that we didn't understand or needed further explanation on.
Thanks to all here who helped with questions. Most of what we learned was just by reading other's questions and experiences.
Now we just wait for the magic appearance of discharge on pacer while rebuilding and going on with our lives......
DadTL
We are walking away from all 7 properties (including our home) and are giving back both vehicles. A note about that, we had 2 vehicle loans with our CU. I turned my gas guzzler truck the day after filing and had picked up a small suv with better mileage prior to filing. We were going to reaffirm the minivan for the wife and kids, but after a lot of non-communication from my CU, they finally told me that we had to reaffirm everything or nothing. We had no cc with them, but we did have a 5k sig loan, 19k heloc on 1 rental, and the 2 car loans (21k on the truck, 10.5 k on the minivan, 2004 model 60k miles, starting to get a bit rough around the edges and paying 340 per mo). They made my decision easy. told them we would reaffirm nothing. Went home and told my wife, "Good news honey, your going to get a new vehicle" (new to her at least).
My saint of a mother is going to buy the new van in her name, and we can get a newer van, with half the miles, much more bells and whistles for around $100 less per mo. We have the housing situation settled. We are acutally getting a new home from a builder (I'm also a realtor part time, have a full time job of 21 years) who is doing a lease purchase on a new construction house in a great area with wonderfull schools.
Anyway, we were called up to see the trustee, he asked for our ss cards and dl's. Spent a few minutes with the standard questions. Asked if the coffee shop was still open, and we said it was. It has not made a profit yet and he saw that in our paperwork. He asked if there were any assets in the coffee shop and i told him that there were loans against the coffee shop for more than the equipment would be worth sold used.
He then spent a few minutes talking (almost grilling) about two properties that I sold to my mother last year. Both are rental properties. One I bought and fixed up and sold to her for exactly what I had in it (only around 18k) and the other I sold to her for full appraised value and used that as her investment into the coffee shop. The profit was around 53k. As far as the means test, we were about 10k over, but with expenses we were well under. We spent a total of about 10 minutes with the trustee and he then said that is it. I thought he ended it a bit abruptly, but our attorney talked to us afterward and said that he was happy with the meeting.
We got an email a little later in the day from our attorney with a copy of pacer showing the trustee had declared us a no asset case. I guess we are now a member of the 60 day club...
We also had no creditors show up even tho several filed appearances. There was a guy in front of us that spent about 25 minutes in front of the trustee with what looked like several creditors. Couldn't hear what was going on, but his body language showed that he was stressing pretty bad....
I was expecting the trustee to ask for more paperwork since I felt like our case was pretty involved with the different businesses and me actually having a full time job with decent income. My attorney said after the meeting that he could ask for some additional info, but since he has ruled "no asset", I guess he is satisfied. The UST was not there. I asked our attorney about that he said that if they did not show up, they usually were not going to get involved.
As I was asking our attorney specific questions and he was answering, he snickered and said that we were much more prepared for this process than most people he sees. I guess we made it a bit easy for him since we were so prepared before ever meeting with him. He didn't have to explain the whole process, just specific stuff that we didn't understand or needed further explanation on.
Thanks to all here who helped with questions. Most of what we learned was just by reading other's questions and experiences.
Now we just wait for the magic appearance of discharge on pacer while rebuilding and going on with our lives......
DadTL
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