tax refund question

[clubmanager]

Hi,
I am just putting together the info for my attorney so he can decide on chapter 7 or 13. I submitted my tax info to our cpa recently as our financial picture is so convoluted, I thought we would have to pay and wanted to do it all at the same time.
Well, lo and behold, we are getting a $17K refund and he e-filed two days ago.

Is there anything I can do to keep all or part of that refund? We are going to not have a house after bk as we are renting so I was wondering if we should buy a small house and use the $17K as a down payment. It would require that much as our credit scores suck now, or so I have to assume.

We are in this predicament due to the economy driving our home values down; now we can't hardly give them away. As a result, we feel like we did nothing wrong and are now going to lose everything. Hell, our 401K's are about worthless too.

[keepmine]

This is one where you likely want to get that redund first and spend it or, put it in exempt assets. Given the amount is large you'll likely need to delay filing for a year or more.
Bring this to the attention of your bk lawyer and see what he/she may suggest.

[BKParalegal]

I doubt he will have to wait a year. A person can blow $17k in necessary living expenses within 3 to 4 months. Also, need to look at if your state has a wildcard exemption which can exempt cash. In regards to purchasing a house, it will depend on your state's homestead exemption and if you do buy a house with it, your attorney will want some time after the purchase before filing.

Good Luck

[hopeforus]

We are getting a refund as well. We were planning to file in Jan but are more thinking income wise to wait until February. Well... that's when we would be filing our taxes. I'd want to file by the end of Feb to take advantage of the months of Aug and Sept when we only had half of Aug with a paycheck. I'm assuming we will have all our info in Feb to file. We could get our refund speedy and... then what? Spend it on what? Would it be bad to spend it in the same month we file? We should maybe get about 5k? Maybe 4k? I am not sure but it will be a few thousand. What would we spend it on that wouldn't look bad?

What should we do? Could we just say goodbye to that money because we don't care much if they take it. They wouldn't count it as income right since they use the last 6mos?

Confusing.