Bought a car from a family member...

[osu76]

About three years ago my wife and I purchased a car from her parents. We made payments for two years on it. There was no loan involved. we just paid them monthly to make life easier.

We met with a BK attorney who was pushing for us to go Chapter 13. we are well under the average income for a family of 4 and everything we have read seems like Chapter 7 is the way to go. The lawyers reason for chapter 7 was that the trustee can go to her parents and try to get the money we paid them. That we don't want to make her parents repay the money we paid them.

He also said our month payment for chapter 13 would be $65 a month for 5 years. My wife and I really liked the guy, but the more we think about it the more we found it odd that he was so quick to push for chapter 13. We would really like to go chapter 7 and get it over with.

My questions are:
1. Should we look for another lawyer to interview with? We were happy with him, but he was adamant that chapter 13 was our only option.
2. How often does this happen? Does someone really look back years to see if you paid money?
3.How far back can a trustee go to get money for something you bought from a family member?
4.The lawyer also said since we have debt acquired since we got married (married 6 years now) that we should do chapter 13. Ohio is not a community property state. Does this sound like a valid reason?

thanks in advance.

[StartingOver08]

Sounds like you need to interview other attorney's!
Remember the attorney's fee for a Ch 13 is substantially higher than a fee for Ch 7

The look back period for insiders (family/friends) is 1 yr. A Trustee can look back further if warranted, but you don't seem to have those red flags from your post.

[berrymom35]

We have a similar situation. DH's parents bought a vehicle for us and we are making payments. We included this in our 7 and included the payments in our schedule J. The trustee asked for MIL's records, which she kept and for our schedules to be amended to reflect insider payments to them, but that was all.

[liz417]

I would definately interview a few more attorneys. I made the mistake of hiring the 1st attorney I consulted with (I didn't know any better at the time) who told me that I would ONLY qualify for a ch 13 with a payment of $400-500/month. I believed this and continued to pay payments on his $4k fee, then found this site and realized that I *might* qualify for a ch 7...I was discharged a few weeks ago
Good Luck to you!