surrendered vehicle. use money during liquedation sale for new transportation?

[LeslieF]

i surrendered my 2007 vehicle to chase auto about 2 months ago. for a year i begged and pleaded with them to refinance the loan so that i could handle the payments. i scraped my $425 monthly car payment together each month until murphy's law happened: the car ran out of oil and the engine siezed. had i taken the good advice from friends who had been thru repo and bk, i would only be $3000 or so still owing instead of $16K. surrender is a great word here because it took me forever to *surrender* and realize i gotta give it all up and close that door before a new one can open.

question though: since the car is gone and there will be an allowance or exemption on transportation thru my chap 7 bk does that mean that some of the money i make during my store liquedation sale can go back to providing me with some sort of transportation? it makes sense to me that $2-30000 would be exempt if i used it on transportation; as i will not be very employable without a vehicle??

[jayalln]

You let a 2007 run out of oil? Wow you really didn't keep up the minimal maintenance

[LeslieF]

ha, ha. there are alot of things i havent been paying attention to these past two years. being new to poverty, there are many options i just did not take advantage of--such as trying to find a mechanic who would fix my oil leak on a payment plan. the problem is that i couldnt have afforded a payment plan. maybe there was someone out there who could have helped me out but it is a done deal now and lesson learned. i am just curious if i will be able to use some of the proceeds from my liquedation sale once i file chap 7 to get inexpensive but reliable transportation so that i can make a living again?

[BCA2009]

Depending on what state you live in you get an exemption for vehicles, which means you can keep a vehicle with the exempt amount of equity.

For example, here in Florida the car exemption sucks, we get $1,000 per person.

So you could keep a $1000 car that was paid off, or you could keep an $11,000 car that you owed $10,000 on (assuming you are still making the payments).

Prior to filing BK you can generally convert non-exempt assets into exempt asse assets. So in Florida you could use proceeds from selling stuff to buy a $1,000 car. This is assuming that no one had a security interest in the stuff you are selling.

Some states also have wildcard exemptions that you can apply to any asset you have. You need to look into the exemptions for your state.