Will this raise suspicion?

[BROKEDED]

We had planned to wring as much time out of a mod app that we could but the servicer has proven to be abolutely redonkulous to deal with so we were almost 100% sure that we were just going to snub them and wait for them to start the foreclosure process again.

Meanwhile, my employer has run the idea past me about working at another location temporarily, but FULL TIME however nothing is certain yet. My pay could possibly increase $500 per week temporarily until they got caught up which could be 4 weeks or 4 months. My only extra expenses would be gas and that would only increase about $150 per month.

IF I got the extra work and those increased paychecks showed up at the end, would this raise a red flag or does the Trustee even see the week by week breakdown of my paychecks? By just filling out the minimum on the means test we are at least -$560 in the hole. If I treat my 401k contribution and loan as income, that would increase our DMI no more than $220 to -$340 per month.

I think it would take a couple months to be borderline fail but I don't want to chance that. The work may not even last that long and/or the servicer may be foreclosing before then but I don't want to get this far and screw up.

[BKlooker]

Question: When are you looking to file? Are there any other things holding you back from filing in the near future? Do you have a lawyer?

If I was you, I would talk to a lawyer about planning the best file timing based on what you noted above. I would think if you are THAT far in the negative DMI, it would indeed take a good 3-4 months into that before you would have issues with passing the means test, and even if you had issues with the DMI part, depending on how much you are paying on your debts could mean you still qualify if you are slightly positive on average.

In addition, it may be that you have extra exemption amounts that you can prove and add on to your subtotal outs to make your DMI lower to counteract it. Are you over the medium income for your state now? If so, is it by a lot?

[BROKEDED]

Question: When are you looking to file? Are there any other things holding you back from filing in the near future? Do you have a lawyer?

Well we were looking to file in about 3-5 months but like I said the servicer is proving to be difficult so we were thinking before February. Nothing holding us back other than procrastination. We have already given a partial payment to an attorney and gotten the paperwork but just haven't finished it yet.

If I was you, I would talk to a lawyer about planning the best file timing based on what you noted above. I would think if you are THAT far in the negative DMI, it would indeed take a good 3-4 months into that before you would have issues with passing the means test, and even if you had issues with the DMI part, depending on how much you are paying on your debts could mean you still qualify if you are slightly positive on average.

In addition, it may be that you have extra exemption amounts that you can prove and add on to your subtotal outs to make your DMI lower to counteract it. Are you over the medium income for your state now? If so, is it by a lot?

We are way over the median by $24k+ but the negative DMI I posted was with just our 2 mortgages, 2 vehicles, health insurance and national standard input for everything else. I basically want to know if making substantially more income for 3 or 4 weeks before filing would make a difference to the Trustee or if they still just look at the whole picture and nothing more.

[BKlooker]

Well, my advice...again not a lawyer or anything...would be to get filed and get it over with so it's not an issue. If you do wait and file, I believe it's what your income will be per month over the past 6 month average (i am sure the real lawyers on here will speak to if this is the case or not).

Just be prepared to show more than a 6 month look back's worth of paystubs and explain when asked what is with the sudden increase in pay truthfully to a trustee. Explain it's due to a temporary additional positioning with your job and that it's set to end shortly. As long as your means test works out based on the honest number, both exemptions and any additional deductions you can input legally (and your lawyer can back you up), you have nothing to worry about.

[tcreegan]

Hi BROKEDED,

I concur with BKLooker, just explain it truthfully to the trustee. If you take the new position watch the filing time, at $500 a week, your 6-month monthly avg goes up by ~$300 a month. Keep the new position/higher paycheck on the other side of the means-test and you can put it on Sched I, line 17 and explain it there.

Hope it all works out for you,

Tom in Colo

[BROKEDED]

Thanks guys. I think we're going to go ahead and get this paperwork filled out so the paralegal can finish everything and we'll then be ready to pull the trigger once I find out if and when I start at the other job.

We were made an offer for a modification but it was laughable and we basically missed any deadline to accept it. I called the Substitute Trustee over the foreclosure to see what kind of timeline we were looking at if the Mod process fell through. They basically said that if they didn't have to start from scratch but that if the servicer wanted to restart the foreclosure immediately, they were scheduling forclosures into March right now. They also said they didn't have to re-notice in the newspaper unless 90 days had lapsed since the last notice.

I'm thinking if we file BK in the first couple of weeks in January then we might can stay until March or April.