Question: Did I just get lucky?

[contest]

We filed for an emergency chapter 7 on July 8, and just submitted all of the schedules and remaining forms yesterday. One thing that really stood out to me was going through my pay stubs to calculate my monthly average income. I pulled seven months of stubs and my attorney and I went through them, and it looks like I got beyond lucky, and my attorney thinks everything is going to be perfectly fine, but I want some more opinions.

Here is my understanding. Since we filed in July, the presumption of abuse and everything is then based off of pay that was actually payed out from January 1 2010 through June 30 2010. Is that correct? If it is, is there any reason, or way the the trustees would want to see any additional pay stubs, and alter that calculation?

The reason I am asking is this. I get paid weekly every friday. I went through the stubs several times and checked and rechecked them, and I only had 25 of them, but it was correct. Since a year is 52 weeks long, logic said I should have 26 of them. My attorney looked at them too and said everything looked fine. It still kept bugging me so I dug a bit further and here is what I found. There have indeed been 26 fridays from Jan 1 to June 30, with Jan 1 being a friday. Well, since Jan 1 was a friday, my company ran payroll a day earlier, and I got my paycheck on Dec 31 2009, thus 26 weeks in 2010, but only 25 paychecks. Since there was a lot of overtime, and holiday pay, bonus on that check, if it had been paid on Jan 1, it would have put me over the median income for Jan - June 2010, so are we right in thinking that since my pay was a day early, that I just got extremely lucky, or is there anything that can bring that into play? If they decide to include that, I am over. Also, my first payroll in July had over a week of vacation cashed out so that I could pay my attorney for the emergency filing, and if that week is included, I am also over. Does anyone see any issues with this, or have I truly gotten really lucky?

[Blueboy]

That proves it! Good things happen to good people.

[Klesko]

I get paid every 1st and 15th but from time to time I get paid on the 31st depending on how the days fall. I timed my filing so that my 6 months, the first month check was on the 31st of the prior month so it looked like I got less checks during that time frame.

So as long as the check is dated the 31st then you are ok. Remember this is ONLY for the automatic assumption of abuse. The UST can look at prior pay checks, even though they shouldn't. However being able to get under the presumption from the start is pretty big.

Unless you have some stuff that would trigger the UST you should be ok.

[SMinGA]

You should not have any issues.

I think many employers/payrolls did this at the end of last year. Seems pretty standard if the pay date falls on a holiday to pay a day earlier. You did not do anything to make this happen in an attempt to alter your lookback income, so should be fine. (As an example - if you 'forgot' to turn in time sheets in June to avoid getting June checks - wanting them in July instead - this would be a bad thing to do.)