Are gifts from friends/family considered income?

[bornfree2]

Over the course of 1-2 year of no-income , debtor receives gifts from friends/ family to help with support. Are these to be noted as income? Or cash received that can be exempted? The funds were spent to support essential living expenses over that period of time.

Are the 90, 6 month, 1 year, 2 year dates here important?

Will traceability of cash gifts be an issue here? (You can imagine how 2 year old paper receipts fade...)

thanks!

[JellyBeany]

Yes, gifts are counted as income for the purpose of means testing and the 6 month look-back period.

[bornfree2]

Yes, gifts are counted as income for the purpose of means testing and the 6 month look-back period.

Thanks. so im looking to account for only up to 6 months?

[justbroke]

Look at the definition of income... see Nolo's definition in their guidebook on filing a Chapter 7. The bankruptcy code doesn't define income, but does use something called "current monthly income" (CMI). CMI, as defined by the bankruptcy code, is all income received from all sources (regardless of taxability), with the exception of payments received under the Social Security Act (or some rather obscure war-related payments).

The bankruptcy code calculates CMI using a six-month lookback on the income and then "projects" an annualized amount.