Disabled Veteran

[Horse of Course]

My husband is a disabled veteran. From my calculations, more than 50% of our debt occurred when my husband was on Active Duty. Has anyone else been in this situation?
I hoping we won't have to do the means test. We have had our free consultation and we will be meeting with the lawyer on the 8th of August. We are hoping to file a chapter 7 and surrender our house and car.

[Help!]

I have not been in your situation but I'll tell you what I know. If you are above the median, you will be subject to the means test. The larger your unsecured debt total, the better off you are on the means test (I know it sounds strange, but when you see the calculations it will make sense).

If your means test calculations result in a number that causes the presumption of abuse to arise, there are special circumstances that rebut it (Congress specifically mentioned military deployment as one of them). "Presumption of abuse" is just a scary way of saying "the math makes it look like you should file Ch. 13". So... should you "fail" the means test, don't automatically assume that you are not eligible for Ch. 7.

Meet with a few attorneys if possible, or at least find some online and go through their forms to learn more and maybe get some questions answered. Good luck!

[magyar123]

My husband is a disabled veteran. From my calculations, more than 50% of our debt occurred when my husband was on Active Duty. Has anyone else been in this situation?
I hoping we won't have to do the means test. We have had our free consultation and we will be meeting with the lawyer on the 8th of August. We are hoping to file a chapter 7 and surrender our house and car.

Disabled coming back from Iraq or Afghanistan??? Recently Congress passed a defense authorization bill/and was signed by Bush that would exempt disabled vets returning from Iraq and/or Afghanistan from the means test requirement.
I watched the hearing on C-Span. Banker friendly legislators were screaming and hollering against this provision, but it passed BIG TIME.
Mention this to your lawyer.

[michele71]

Actually I believe that you must do a couple things to qualify here. Majority of your debt must have been incurred while on active duty or performing homeland defense activity AND be disabled. As long as those 2 things happened then no means test for you.

[Horse of Course]

michele71 you are correct. We will be filing next month and since the majority of our debt incurred while my husband was on active duty and my husband is a disabled veteran we don't have to do the means test.

[elstx]

I didn't have to do it either, being a disabled vet. How did your BK turn out? We have our 341 next month.

[Horse of Course]

I didn't have to do it either, being a disabled vet. How did your BK turn out? We have our 341 next month.

We haven't filed yet. We should be filing very soon. We just made our final payment to our attorney. We have surrendered our car. We have moved out of our house and we are renting a much nicer house than we had and our rent is $1000 less than our mortgage!

[pemil66]

Can we file

Can someone help me can we file a Chapter 7, my wife and i made around 130,000 last year out of that $1500 a month is from the VA and $1100 is retirement Navy and $4200 is from my new job. Our big thing id credit card bills totaling to around $66,000 and thats about $1500 payment i just dont want to see the judge and he say chapter 13.

[papajahn]

no means test, but then what?

Hi, hopefully someone has a little insight for us...


I am a disabled vet(100%), living in Texas, whose debt was soley incurred while on active duty. I understand that we (my wife and I) are exempt from the means test; but where does that leave us?


How does a chapter 7 proceed from there?

How do they assess eligibility? debt vs income??

Is my disability included in the calculations?

Any help is appreciated,

PJ

[pemil66]

It just lets you bypass the means test that’s all so far, the trustee said she was referring me to a chapter 13 but I’m still waiting to see. Yes they included my disability income.

[papajahn]

Thank you...I guess we'll have to wait and see.