Northern California Bankruptcy Lawyer

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7 Keys To Keeping Your House: Chapter 13 After You File

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keep the house

Filing Chapter 13 bankruptcy stops the foreclosure.  You’ve protected your home, for the moment.

Bankruptcy gets you a sheltered legal environment to address the problems with your mortgage.

You heave a sigh of relief.

But the fight to keep your house isn’t over, just because there’s a stay.  You’ve just gotten through the first round.

You need to stay on your toes for the balance of the match to emerge with your house safe at the end of your bankruptcy.

Here’s what you need to know.

Mortgage lenders get special consideration

In the bankruptcy context,  the mortgage lender gets privileged treatment.

Anglo Saxon law, from which US law is drawn, has long given particular protection to the claims of property owners.  After all, it was those who owned property who wrote the laws.

The mortgage lender gets that special treatment because the lender’s lien is a property interest in your home.

That lien entitles the lender to regular payments;  if payments aren’t made, the lender can ask for relief from stay to foreclose.

The exception is if the value of the collateral is less than the total of the liens ahead of the lien in question.  Think:  underwater second mortgage.

Follow these 7 keys for keeping your house AND getting a discharge in Chapter 13.

1.  Regular mortgage payments required

Most Chapter 13 plans provide that the trustee pays the arrears on your mortgage, while you make the payments that come due after filing.

Make the payments- that means property taxes and insurance as well.

Too often, homeowners get fixated on paying the arrearages on their mortgage that they overlook, or struggle, with the ongoing payments.

Court are intolerant of borrowers who want the protection of the bankruptcy stay, but don’t take seriously their obligation to pay the monthly payments that come due after filing.

That intolerance spills over into dismissal of  Chapter 13 cases without a discharge when debtors fail to make current payments.

2.  Look for other liens

Chapter 13 isn’t limited to fixing problems with mortgage liens.  Your plan can either avoid altogether or reduce the amount of tax or judgment liens,

Make sure that you check the public record to see if any avoidable liens have attached, unnoticed, to your home.

If you find liens, your plan can cut them down to size.

3.  Pursue modification

Your best bet may be to agree with the lender on a modification of your mortgage.  Nothing in Chapter 13 stops the parties from considering modification.

Northern California bankruptcy judges have decreed that negotiations for a modification do not violate the automatic stay

Frequently, the modified mortgage either folds the arrears into the loan balance, to be paid over the life of the loan. Or, modification designates a portion of the amount owed as not bearing interest, but payable at loan-end or sale.

A modification that cures the arrears may eliminate the mortgage arrears portion of a Chapter 13 monthly payment, thereby increasing the chances of success.

4.  Review the lender’s claim

In order to be paid in a Chapter 13, a creditor must file a proof of claim.  For mortgages secured by the debtor’s principal residence, a detailed attachment is required.

The mortgage attachment must account for payments and charges to the loan from the date of the first, uncured default.

The POC also contains an analysis of any escrowed taxes and insurance, and the adequacy of the monthly payment to pay those expenses.

Dig into these numbers and see if they match your payment records and whether they are otherwise complete.

There’s lots of data there, some of it correct and some woefully wrong.

5.  Keep records of  your payments

Too many mortgage servicers fail the fundamental task of accepting your payments and crediting them properly.

The method of accounting changes with bankruptcy:  payments made after filing are supposed to be credited to a separate accounting for your loan, while the pre bankruptcy record stands alone

Servicers don’t always do that.  Payments sometimes sit for months on someone’s desk, undeposited.

I tell clients to pay with paper checks on their accounts and send the payment by a method that gets you a receipt upon delivery to the servicer.

It’s a hassle, I know, but you end up with a record from your bank that the check was cashed, and you have proof that it was delivered.  The added expense is nothing to the cost of your attorney having to track down the facts showing you paid.

6.  Read payment change notices

If your monthly mortgage payment changes after you file bankruptcy, the servicer must send you a Notice Of Payment Change.

The change may be driven by an interest rate change or a change in the cost of escrowed taxes or insurance.

Even though it comes on a court form, and looks dense, you’ve got to read it and adjust your post filing payments on your mortgage accordingly.

If you’re uncertain, ask your lawyer.

7.  Exploit case-end rules

When you’ve made your last payment to the trustee, bankruptcy rules require a notice to the mortgage servicer about the state of your loan balance.

If the lender claims that either the pre-bankruptcy claim hasn’t been paid in full, OR, that there are unpaid amounts arising after you filed, they must file a reply.

This call-and-response procedure flushes out any difficulties that show in the lender’s books, and provides a mechanism and a judge to sort things out.

The goal is to exit bankruptcy knowing exactly where you stand on the home loan.

Make sure this happens in your case.

If you change your mind

Things change over time.  If you find that keeping the house no longer fits with your financial future, tell your lawyer immediately.

The confirmed Chapter 13 plan obligates you to make the payments you promised as well as obligating your creditors to stand down.

There’s nothing wrong with changing your mind, so long as you change your Chapter 13 plan to match.

Far too many debtors recently get to the end of the case and get their cases dismissed, without a discharge, because they stopped paying on the mortgage and didn’t alert their lawyer.

More

Make sure you don’t lose house and discharge

Monitoring your mortgage loan 

Before you list your house for sale

 

How Chapter 13 Cuts Car Loan Down To Size

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car in bankruptcy

Car lenders who make new car loans with an underwater trade-in will face the music in Chapter 13.

The Supreme Court declined to review a 9th Circuit decision that stripped car loans of their protected specially protected status in bankruptcy; as a result, Californians will continue to benefit from the debtor-friendly decision in Penrod, rising out of a San Francisco bankruptcy case.

The question in Penrod

At issue was whether the prohibition on cramming down the debt on a vehicle purchased within 910 days of a bankruptcy filing protected “negative equity” financed in the car purchase.

“Negative equity” is the debt in excess of the trade in’s value. That left-over debt is added to the total of the new car loan and is unrelated to the value of the purchased vehicle.

And BAPCPA, the bankruptcy “reform” act of 2005 prohibited reducing a secured claim on a vehicle purchased within 910 days of the bankruptcy.  But did it similarly protect that part of the loan that wasn’t really related to the cost of the vehicle purchased?

Penrod facts

In Penrod, the Redwood City resident had traded in a car worth $6,000 on which she owed $13,000.  The new car loan included $7000 necessary to pay off the debt on the trade in.

The legal issue is whether that left over debt should enjoy the projections extended car sellers in BAPCPA for purchase money loans on the debtor’s car.

Every other circuit that addressed the question has given purchase money protection to the entire debt including the negative equity portion of the new loan.

The 9th Circuit held the negative equity was not purchase money as to the current car.  The appeals court remanded the case for the bankruptcy court to figure out how to apportion the payments made before bankruptcy between the purchase money element and the leftover debt element.

It’s surprising to me that SCOTUS didn’t accept cert on Penrod, since there is clearly a split among the circuits and it seems to this California bankruptcy lawyer that the Supremes take great pleasure in overturning the 9th Circuit.

But I’ll take a victory however it presents itself and await a decision on how to calculate what can be trimmed from a debtor’s car loan in bankruptcy.

More

How Chapter 13 thwarts repossession

Keeping your car after Chapter 7

10 ways bankruptcy makes you better off

Image  Snackariah under a Creative Commons license

Chapter 13 Dismissed After All Payments Are Made: Self Inflicted Wounds

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Debtors shoot themselvesThere’s been a rash of bullet-ridden feet lately in Chapter 13 cases.

Debtors seem to whip out their pistols and shoot themselves in the foot with increasing regularity.

Just when their goal of keeping the house was within reach, had they paid attention, they lose it all.

It happens when debtors don’t hold up their end of the bankruptcy bargain.

And at the end of the day, or the end of the plan, they get none of the benefits they sought through bankruptcy.

How does that happen?

Chapter 13 saves houses

The overwhelming majority of Chapter 13 cases in the Bay Area are filed to save a house.

The homeowner needs to catch up on payments, or more frequently, needs a loan modification in order to keep the house.

The Bay Area bankruptcy judges have developed procedures to confirm Chapter 13 plans, and get money flowing out to creditors, while a loan modification is under consideration.  If there is anything we know about loan modifications, it’s that they take time and persistence.

Troubles after the loan modification

One of the provisions of the Chapter 13 plan that the debtor proposes for confirmation by the court addresses how the mortgage lender will be paid while we wait on a loan modification.

The plan might provide that the debtor will make the regular payment, according to the loan terms, directly to the lender in the meantime.

Or, the debtor may propose to make an ongoing payment to the mortgage lender calculated according the the HAMP formula, which says that housing costs should be no more than 31% of a person’s gross income.

So, the HAMP payment to the lender works out to be 31% of monthly income, less property taxes and hazard insurance.

Whichever approach the debtor chooses to deal with the current mortgage payment, it’s set out in the plan, along with the monthly payment the debtor will make to the trustee toward other kinds of debts.

Once a plan is confirmed by the judge, it binds all parties, creditors, trustee and the debtor.  See §1327.

Only some debtors seem to forget their part of this deal.  They don’t make the ongoing payments and don’t modify their plans to match their behavior.

Confirmed plans when loan modification denied

Another variation on our Bay Area plan is the plan provision that says “if I don’t get a loan modification, I will immediately modify the plan or surrender the house”.  I’m paraphrasing the language but the idea is clear:  if I can’t modify the plan, I’ll present an alternative plan to the court.

And then the homeowner doesn’t get a modification, and doesn’t present another plan.

And apparently expects good things to happen despite the failure to live up to his post bankruptcy promises.

Discharge depends on plan performance

The debtor in a Chapter 13 gets a discharge “after completion of all payments under the plan”.  §1328.

The payments “under the plan” include those that the debtor undertook to make directly, rather than through the Chapter 13 trustee.  (In the Northern District of California, we don’t do “conduit plans” where even the post filing mortgage payments are made to the trustee.)

When it comes out that the debtor hasn’t made the on going payments or hasn’t gotten a loan modification, more and more Chapter 13 trustee are recommending that the case be closed without a discharge, since the debtor failed to meet his promises made in bankruptcy.

Ouch!

Candor works

Facing up to a change of heart about a house, or the painful failure to get a loan modification, seems tough at the time.

What debtors seem to be missing is that all the non-house benefits of a bankruptcy discharge are squandered if the Chapter 13 gets closed without discharging those debts.

The other factor that is probably not obvious to the distraught homeowner is that foreclosure does not always follow immediately from the announcement that the debtor elects to surrender the house.

The foreclosure that took forever

Even when we want lenders to foreclose on unwanted property, they don’t.  Or don’t very quickly.

It is not as though the debtor will be immediately homeless if they admit it isn’t working out.

This is my clarion call to debtors:

  • Keep your bankruptcy lawyer in the loop about mortgage payments and loan modifications.
  • Keep a copy of your Chapter 13 plan handy and review what you’ve promised to do in exchange for the protection of the automatic stay and the discharge at the end of the case.

Your lawyer can’t help you if you keep secrets.

More

Roundup of our best advice on keeping your house

 

Debt Limits Increase For Chapter 13 Bankruptcy

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bankruptcy debt limitsNew debt limits for Chapter 13 become effective on April Fool’s Day, 2019.

The new numbers are effective for cases filed April 1, 2019 and will control for the next 3 years.

And those limits are:

Unsecured debt = $ 419,175

Secured debt = $$1,257,850

The current limits effective through March 31, 2019 are

 unsecured debt = $394,725

 secured debt = $1,184,200

In the Bay Area, that will mean more families will be eligible to file Chapter 13.

Why Chapter 13 rocks

Chapter 13 bankruptcy allows individuals to strip off worthless liens, cure home loan defaults, and pay recent taxes over time, without interest.

In Chapter 13, the person filing keeps ownership and control of their assets.  They create a plan to repay creditors, in whole, or more usually, in part from future income.

Why 13 is best

While in 13, they are protected by the automatic stay from collection actions. They have access to the bankruptcy court to enforce that protection.  The bankruptcy judge is also available to resolve disputes about the allowance of claims or mortgage accounting.

Is debt secured or unsecured

The debt limits apply to debts that are liquidated and not contingent.

Secured debts are those for which the creditor has collateral.  The most common secured debts are mortgages, home equity lines of credit, and car loans.

Tax liens and judgment liens also fall into the secured debt pile, but only to the extent that the lien attaches to value in your possessions.

More about secured debts in bankruptcy .

Unsecured debts are those where there is no collateral or where the lien is greater than the available collateral.

In my Bankruptcy Alphabet, U is for Unsecured.

A great recent decision by the 9th Circuit determined that you don’t have to count liens that have passed through a previous bankruptcy as unsecured.

There are no debt limits in Chapter 7 or Chapter 11.

Exemptions expand

The value of items protected by exemptions under the bankruptcy code also increases April 1.

This means little to Californians since the federal bankruptcy exemptions aren’t available in California.

Instead, we have the Code of Civil Procedure 703.140 series of exemptions which mimic the federal exemptions.  The dollar amounts of the §703 exemptions are found here.

The Federal Register published the Bankruptcy Code changes of other dollar amounts found in the Code, such as the cap on priority employee wage claims, preference safe harbors, and luxury goods purchases.

Enjoy the increases. They are with us for another three years.

 Image courtesy of geehall2.

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Suite 403
Redwood City, CA 94063
Phone: (650) 694-4700

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