Filing Ch. 7 with "Special Circumstances"

[melissah34]

We were over median but husband was fired. I stay at home. We used special circumstances of unemployment and we got through. My husband did get a job right after the 341 but we are under median now. The UST did file a motion for abuse. They did ask for current income statements after the 341 but determined that income was not at the same level so determined abuse was not appropriate. We were certainly on pins and needles the entire time but we made it.

[backtoschool]

We were over median but husband was fired. I stay at home. We used special circumstances of unemployment and we got through. My husband did get a job right after the 341 but we are under median now. The UST did file a motion for abuse. They did ask for current income statements after the 341 but determined that income was not at the same level so determined abuse was not appropriate. We were certainly on pins and needles the entire time but we made it.

A motion for abuse is something to avoid if possible and that is why we suggested that the OP not file with "special circumstances".

[clevelandmom]

Hi again everyone. Thank you so much for posting your responses. I will clarify a couple of things:
First, I'm sorry I confused you all thinking that my atty is looking back a whole year. She is not. I just meant that my husband started working at the beginning of the year (after being laid off for 6 months last year) and he worked until August. Right now our "look back" is May through October. So for the months of May through mid-August, he and I were both working. Second, I am so ridiculously screwed when it comes to using anything for medical. He is in the union, and they take almost $900 per month out of his pay pre-taxed for our health insurance. The monthly fee is high because there is a certain amount "banked" every month to cover him for the months he is laid off (like now). Also, part of that money goes into a fund that we can pull out for anything we need - like co-pays, prescriptions, anything dental, etc. So when it comes to medical anything, we are already 100 percent covered. I have been reading these boards and there might be one or two things we didn't include that I'm going to try because I want to get that number down. I also wonder if our attorney realizes that the unemployment checks my husband is getting are withOUT taxes taken out, so we need to include a percentage every month to pay taxes on that money, if they haven't already.
Melissa: How much over median were you when you filed? Thank you all so much for your responses. We are meeting with our atty on Monday to file, and we really HAVE TO file Monday because I will be garnished on Tuesday if we don't. Hopefully when we go through the numbers on Monday, we can magically find something we missed. That $135 over is such an untruthful number. Right now my husband and I are easily -$150 per month.

[tcreegan]

Hi again clevelandmom,

Did you ask your atty about In re Sorrell, 359 B.R. 167 (Bankr. S.D. Ohio 2007)?

What did they say?

Tom in Colo

[clevelandmom]

Hi Tom - I did have the conversation at the very beginning when I first hired the attorney and they said yes, the court DOES include unemployment compensation as income.

[melissah34]

A motion for abuse is something to avoid if possible and that is why we suggested that the OP not file with "special circumstances".

Don't I know it, from experience! I agree that if you are reasonably sure that you will have a chance in a reasonable amount of time to file without the presumption then by all means it's best to avoid it.

To answer your question, clevelandmom, we were $8,000 a year over median income and using our old income versus expenses we were $3100/mo. over (we have very low expenses w/out debt!) The attorney used just our unemployment on schedules I and J so that shows negative. Our attorney was very confident in filing and said that they do it quite often. I guess my thinking was that we had no idea how long the unemployment would last and no idea what kind of job he could get and this way we had a chance at a chapter 7. It would have taken a couple months at least to get us below median. If we got converted because of a job that was too good then we would have had to file a chapter 13 anyway if we waited or if we didn't. So after weighing our options, that was what we chose and it worked out for us.