To file or not to file...

[sealpup]

My husband's temp position is going to turn perm in 1-2 months (99% sure). It's just a matter of exactly when. With this he is going to get a 5-10K raise per year. Filling out the schedule J *without* this raise we probably have $800-1000 DMI (that's taking the creditors we are currently paying out of the picture, and the 2nd mortgage which we could probably strip in BK). We have about 30K in unsecured debt. Crunching the numbers on schedule J to include the raise my husband is likely to get I'm not sure if it's worth it to file BK or not. There's no way it would be worth it if we had to do a 5 year plan. (We are currently a few hundred dollars below the mean). If I take what I believe our true DMI would be post raise and multiply that by 36 months- it's more than what we already have in unsecured debt. They only thing it could possibly help with would be the arrears on our 1st mortgage and we are waiting to see if we can get a mod done. Would a trustee make you pay more than you actually owe over your plan because of a high DMI, or would the case just be dismissed? If we do decide to file would it be better to do it now, or wait til he gets the raise? Is there a law about how much of a raise you have to report to the trustee- I have heard 10% but didn't know if this was common practice or law. I guess the nice thing is if all of our DMI is going into the ch. 13 and our payments could potentially go up by my husband getting a raise perhaps I could actually work less and be at home with our kids more. It'd be like me working more hours just to throw $ at the trustee.

Am I not looking at this right, or missing something? I just keep going back and forth on this. I'd like to file a ch. 7 but with being behind on our mortgage we probably shouldn't. We have no equity in our house- probably upside down by 50K at least. We have 2 cars but they would be extempt. We really have no other assets.

We have talked to 2 lawyers and will talk to 2 more next week. I feel like sometimes they don't give you an honest answer because it's $$ in their pockets if you file BK. What if we hired a laywer, paid the retainer and then ended up deciding not to file afterall? Can we do that, and if so does he just keep the retainer and we call it even?

Thanks in advance

[scorpion35]

My husband's temp position is going to turn perm in 1-2 months (99% sure). It's just a matter of exactly when. With this he is going to get a 5-10K raise per year. Filling out the schedule J *without* this raise we probably have $800-1000 DMI (that's taking the creditors we are currently paying out of the picture, and the 2nd mortgage which we could probably strip in BK). We have about 30K in unsecured debt. Crunching the numbers on schedule J to include the raise my husband is likely to get I'm not sure if it's worth it to file BK or not. There's no way it would be worth it if we had to do a 5 year plan. (We are currently a few hundred dollars below the mean). If I take what I believe our true DMI would be post raise and multiply that by 36 months- it's more than what we already have in unsecured debt. They only thing it could possibly help with would be the arrears on our 1st mortgage and we are waiting to see if we can get a mod done. Would a trustee make you pay more than you actually owe over your plan because of a high DMI, or would the case just be dismissed? If we do decide to file would it be better to do it now, or wait til he gets the raise? Is there a law about how much of a raise you have to report to the trustee- I have heard 10% but didn't know if this was common practice or law. I guess the nice thing is if all of our DMI is going into the ch. 13 and our payments could potentially go up by my husband getting a raise perhaps I could actually work less and be at home with our kids more. It'd be like me working more hours just to throw $ at the trustee.

Am I not looking at this right, or missing something? I just keep going back and forth on this. I'd like to file a ch. 7 but with being behind on our mortgage we probably shouldn't. We have no equity in our house- probably upside down by 50K at least. We have 2 cars but they would be extempt. We really have no other assets.

We have talked to 2 lawyers and will talk to 2 more next week. I feel like sometimes they don't give you an honest answer because it's $$ in their pockets if you file BK. What if we hired a laywer, paid the retainer and then ended up deciding not to file afterall? Can we do that, and if so does he just keep the retainer and we call it even?

Thanks in advance

i would not file BK

[sealpup]

Why wouldn't you? I was thinking that- until my husband pointed out that if we are able to strip the 2nd mortgage it would probably save us 100K over 30 years. I was also thinking maybe we could just be diligent about putting our DMI into savings and using that to try to do settlements with the cc companies and 3rd party collectors that we are in debt too. There are just so many ins and outs to this I don't know what to do.

[scorpion35]

Why wouldn't you? I was thinking that- until my husband pointed out that if we are able to strip the 2nd mortgage it would probably save us 100K over 30 years. I was also thinking maybe we could just be diligent about putting our DMI into savings and using that to try to do settlements with the cc companies and 3rd party collectors that we are in debt too. There are just so many ins and outs to this I don't know what to do.

u only have $30000 in debt ,not a lot
u can't strip a 2nd mortgage in a chapter 7 BK