About to leave for 341

[GeG_Lost]

I wasn't even remotely nervous yesterday, or this morning. In fact I didn't really think about it at all. About 10 minutes ago sheer panic set in. My husband is on his way home from work to meet me and the babysitter is on her way here so we can leave. I hope I can make it down there without being ill. We are the first meeting after lunch I think (or in the first group), so we won't get to watch anyone else. *fingers crossed*

[hamletsdead]

Good luck. Break a leg.

[arami008]

Good luck!!

Let us know how it went?

[jessegirl]

Goodluck hun. It will go just fine. Let us know how you made out.

[queenfluff]

I would imagine this is going to be like going in for an job interview. I always feel fine the day before those and than like an hour before I have to feel I get all anxious.

Good luck and tell us your story when you get back.

[jb1231]

Keep us posted!

[GeG_Lost]

Well, we had some minor glitches but our lawyer said it is only paperwork that she has to amend and get back to him. When we got there the trustee from this morning was still using the room so we were standing in the hallway waiting on our attorney. The trustee walked in and started chatting with us and the other man that was there. I could tell by looking at the bag of paperwork he had that he was the trustee. I just stood there praying my husband would not say anything stupid and wishing the other guy who kept going on and on about how his debt was everyone else's fault would stop for his own sake. I doubt it made him look too great that he kept saying he had perfect credit before this and never had any financial problems then had to say under oath that he had previously filed bk. I really doubt it helped his case that he looked at the docket and asked the trustee which one he was and who his attorney was. That was the funny part of the day for me.

Anyway for income last year they put our taxable income only, but we have not taxable entitlements. Even with the extras we are $10,000 under the median for our family size, but he wants it all on there for what seems to be obvious reasons to me. Our lawyer said she will amend the paperwork, but she wants to discuss the issue further with him because she said there are other people in our situation that are close to the median that it would affect. Basically, since he is military he gets basic allowance for sustinence and basic allowance for housing, but if he ate in the dining facility or lived in some government quarters they would not include those allowances. She is bothered by fact that two people in the exact same financial situation could be treated differently due to paperwork differences.

She said none of that will affect us in any way. We also have most of his pay going into our checking account, but an $800 allotment that goes to savings. We transfer it to checking every month because we need it to live on. First he seemed to think it wasn't included in our budget and we have an $800 surplus. Then he seemed to think it was deducted twice from our budget. The bottom line is, he wants our Schedules I and J redone and turned back into him with the discretionary allotment listed differently and the entitlements included.

About the time he asked us what we spent our $9000 tax return on, I decided he either was not carefully looking over our paperwork, or he was really bad at math. We got a $5000 tax return, not a $9000 one. When I pointed that out, he said he accidentally added two figures in his head. We told him bills and he asked us specifically what kind of bills. I told him that $1700 went to the lawyer, we had to catch up our car payment, catch up life insurance, the kids expenses etc. It took me a bit to catch on that he only wanted to know if we paid any to our credit cards that he could go after. As soon as I said nothing to creditors other than the car, he moved on.

He asked why we have a savings bond purchased every four months if we cash them immediately when we can. My husband told him that they set them up to come out of his pay when he joined the Army and despite numerous requests he was unsucessfull at getting them stopped.

I thought it was going to be bad when he asked first how long we had been residents of Colorado and my husband told him that he was not a resident technically. Luckily we have lived here 6 years so it wasn't an issue. The rest of the questions were pretty general I think. He asked if we understood that any life insurance proceeds or inheritances for the 6 months following discharge were property of the estate and that we had a responsibility to report them. He asked if the signatures on our paperwork were indeed ours. He asked if we had read the debtors education notices, if we understood that there were other chapters available, if he understood that it had a negative affect on our credit rating, and that kind of thing. He asked to verify the amounts that were in our accounts the day we filed. He had written those down wrong as well and showed us having nearly $1000 in our accounts rather than the $9 we actually had, lol.

The good news, according to our lawyer, is that he did NOT ask for pictures of anything. She said he almost always asks for them at the meeting if he sees any possibility of taking assets. I thought for sure he would have asked about the motorcycle despite the fact that it is a 25 year old piece of crap for the sheer fact that it is a "luxury item". It is not coverend by exemptions, but it is also probably only worth $500 or under. I guess maybe it isn't enough to make it worthwhile for him and if he saw pictures he would probably say nevermind anyway, lol.

Anyway, I know that was lengthy, but I tend to be long-winded. It did last a little longer than I expected while he corrected a bunch of his prior notes with different figures. We were probably in there 20 to 30 minutes while he scratched things out and wrote new figures.