Dilemma, CH7 or 13?

[walkthaplank]

Original plan was to file CH13 to strip 2nd and pay past due prop taxes and ultimately discharge unsecured debt. Spoke with my lawyer's paralegal today and he tells me that our case is at about the break even point. He said we could file CH7 and be done with it, but we'd still be on the hook for the taxes and 2nd, or if we plan on filing CH13 we need to rework our budget because we are WAY too negative in our DMI. He says our CH13 plan, if we fix the DMI problem, would be about 200-250/mo for 60 months.

So I'm wondering if I should do the CH7, borrow money to pay taxes and then try to buy out 2nd lien which I could probably do with a loan from my 401k plan about the time I would be discharged, or should I just pay the $15-18k over the 5 years of a CH13 plan? The dollar amounts would be almost the same, only one would involve me finding a way to borrow money to buy them out quickly, or paying them in nice even payments over the next 5 years while hoping nothing drastic happens during that time.

[2manybills]

In my opinion, I would file a Chapter 7 and be done. If you are a 13, you will be under the scrutiny of the TT for 5 years. That means, tax returns, major purchases, etc.

I was wondering too about stripping my 2nd (I'm about 95K upside down). I decided I would rather be done and over with this, and then maybe figure out a way to buy down the 2nd. The real estate market is so crazy in So. Cal. who knows where we'll be in 5 years.