I'd really appreciate your wisdom on this. I'm not sure how to approach it, but this is what I'm thinking:
With my current income, my husband and I make too much money to file Ch.7. I was recently diagnosed with Lupus, and it is looking like I will need to stop working at the end of this school year. I am a teacher. Because the courts look at the last 6 months of income for the means test, I'm thinking that we will probably be looking at filing around January of 2010. My last paycheck will be in July 2011, so I'm thinking January will be 6 months later and show only my husband's income. Here are my questions:
1.) Is there any advantage/disadvantage to filing in January of a new year?
2.) We've been paying an extra 2,000/mo toward our debt (my income, basically) to try to pay it off for the last year and a half. I'd like to continue paying our minimum payments until we're within a few months of filing so we don't get a judgement or lien. But, if we're going to file for sure, the extra 2,000/mo we were paying toward debt should be used strategically. We're looking at 2000/mo for about 8 months. We WILL lose one of our cars that we're severely upside down on when we file. Can we safely purchase a 6-8K car with this extra money? (We are very upside down on our house, so we can use the wildcard exemption to protect our old beater (worth about 3K) and another car, if we purchase one.) Would the courts be okay with this?
3.) We have a third on our house. Can it be "stripped" from our mortgage? I've heard of this, but wasn't sure what it meant. We owe 150K, 180K, and 47K (1st, 2nd, 3rd), and our house is now worth about 250K. It was worth almost 500K. As I said, we live in California...
Thanks for any help/ideas/info!
With my current income, my husband and I make too much money to file Ch.7. I was recently diagnosed with Lupus, and it is looking like I will need to stop working at the end of this school year. I am a teacher. Because the courts look at the last 6 months of income for the means test, I'm thinking that we will probably be looking at filing around January of 2010. My last paycheck will be in July 2011, so I'm thinking January will be 6 months later and show only my husband's income. Here are my questions:
1.) Is there any advantage/disadvantage to filing in January of a new year?
2.) We've been paying an extra 2,000/mo toward our debt (my income, basically) to try to pay it off for the last year and a half. I'd like to continue paying our minimum payments until we're within a few months of filing so we don't get a judgement or lien. But, if we're going to file for sure, the extra 2,000/mo we were paying toward debt should be used strategically. We're looking at 2000/mo for about 8 months. We WILL lose one of our cars that we're severely upside down on when we file. Can we safely purchase a 6-8K car with this extra money? (We are very upside down on our house, so we can use the wildcard exemption to protect our old beater (worth about 3K) and another car, if we purchase one.) Would the courts be okay with this?
3.) We have a third on our house. Can it be "stripped" from our mortgage? I've heard of this, but wasn't sure what it meant. We owe 150K, 180K, and 47K (1st, 2nd, 3rd), and our house is now worth about 250K. It was worth almost 500K. As I said, we live in California...
Thanks for any help/ideas/info!
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