How do you redeem your car after bankruptcy w/o using a lawyer?

[debtmonster]

KBB says my car is only worth $4600 and I owe over $10,000. The lawyer wants $625 to process the paperwork if I want to pay off the car and keep it rather than give it back.

Is there a way of paying the $4600 to the bank after the discharge instead of involving my attorney? I can't see spending another $625 for some paperwork to do this. I'd rather deal directly with the bank and say, "Hey, I'll give you $4600 cash for the car, take it or leave it" and just have them mail me the title.

Has anyone managed to do this? If I can get $4600 saved up in the next 90 days since I won't be paying all of the bills anymore, I should be able to pay cash after discharge rather than using a ripoff service like 722redemption.com and paying 24.99% interest.

I am hoping to get a Christmas bonus of a few grand. If I can save up this money in the next few months plus add the Christmas bonus, then I will have a significant amount to put down on a new car if this can't be fulled off. It would just be much cheaper to pay $4600 and keep my car and not have payments. Then we could pay off the car and use the bonus money to buy a 2nd car for my wife since she needs a car to drive to college and I will need one to drive to a day job in the opposite direction.

[HHM]

Nope. Redemption must be done within the BK.

The bank may agree to accept the payment after the fact as a negotiated settlement, but fat chance.

[music12]

if you dont' do it within the bk, they could get a relief from stay and repo, so after discharge would be too late.

[debtmonster]

I want to make a deal with them on something like day 61, right before they repo the car.

[music12]

if they get a relief from stay, they won't wait that long.

[debtmonster]

if they get a relief from stay, they won't wait that long.

My lawyer is going to fight the relief from stay so I can keep the car for several months.

[HHM]

If your goal is to "keep" the car, you need to redeem.

Once discharge is entered, the automatic stay is lifted anyway, so they will repo at that point.

Car lenders are not going to make a deal. They just repo.

[justbroke]

Is there a way of paying the $4600 to the bank after the discharge instead of involving my attorney? I can't see spending another $625 for some paperwork to do this. I'd rather deal directly with the bank and say, "Hey, I'll give you $4600 cash for the car, take it or leave it" and just have them mail me the title.

No. Redemptions must be done before discharge.

[debtmonster]

Car lenders are not going to make a deal. They just repo.

Then they can have a car with 76,000 miles on it with no warranty.

I'm not paying $5,000+ to keep it. It will be hard to locate parts for it soon since Saturn will be all different. My lawyer even advised to give it back since I have all those miles on it. He said I will have plenty of offers for a new car and not to worry. He stood to lose $600 bucks by saying that because that's what he would make if he tried to get me to keep the car.

[aces67]

I guess it depends on your creditor. We surrendered dh's truck. When they finally did come get it about 2 weeks later they sent us a letter saying that they would settle and give it back to us for 6K cash. We owed them $10K. The letter said they would give us 2 weeks to make our decision.

We ended up just letting it go back. It was through GMAC.

[debtmonster]

That's cool. Maybe they will give us the same offer then with GMAC.