trustee hires his own law firm?

[ruttie]

We are in a bk 7, we do have some raw land, that may or may not have any value. The trustee has hired a law firm to do any necessary adverse filing that may have to be done. This is the question, is it customary for the trustee to hire his own law firm and would this be a conflict of interest in any way? Our attorney said that they may hire an attorney, because the trustee is too busy to determine specific value of certain assets, & I am sure everyone would like a piece of the pie, but is this common practice & does it mean anything is going to go badly with the bk?

[backtoschool]

We are in a bk 7, we do have some raw land, that may or may not have any value. The trustee has hired a law firm to do any necessary adverse filing that may have to be done. This is the question, is it customary for the trustee to hire his own law firm and would this be a conflict of interest in any way? Our attorney said that they may hire an attorney, because the trustee is too busy to determine specific value of certain assets, & I am sure everyone would like a piece of the pie, but is this common practice & does it mean anything is going to go badly with the bk?

Yes it is a common practice. Trustees are lawyers and they want to be able to bill the hours it takes to legally administer the asset case (apart from the fixed things that a trustee does as trustee). I was an asset case and my trustee used his law own law firm to do all of the legalities regarding the asset case.

[CoBelle]

Yep, I agree it is common practice.
From my personal experience, if the suspected 'asset' can be made to appear of small value and especially if it suspected that you will object to the trustee taking the property (instead of abandoning it), you might get the property abandoned as 'inconsequential' because the trustees lawyer most certainly wants to be paid. I had a lawsuit that the 'other side' wnated to settle with the trustee instead of with me because they figured the trustee would settle for less. He asked me if I would object to his objecting to my claim of exemption and also to his settling and when he found out that I would, he just let it go (which was the best thing for me).

While I'd never suggest taht the trustee's attorney can be your 'friend', I must say that I felt 'heard' and 'respected' by the trustee's attorney in my particular case, after a very rocky start.

[ruttie]

I don't want to worry needlessly, so is this common that the trustee will hire an attorney in an asset case as common practice? The trustee asked if we were surrendering the properties and we said yes. He wanted to know if we had tried to sell them, at which point I did try to sell a large parcel, but there is very little demand for raw land & I didn't want to sell for less than what I considereed FMV, just in case they would question this .

[btbeme]

Yes - in almost every asset case, the Trustee gets help from their attorney.

[frogger]

Happens all the time, nothing unusual with this.