Making Trustee Payments at the last minute
When in a Chapter 13, a Debtor should never wait until the last minute to make the Trustee payment. Many times a Debtor will miss a couple payments, the Trustee will file a notice of intent to dismiss giving the Debtor 15 days to make the payment, and then the Debtor will go in on day 16 and find their case still gets dismissed.
Recently, I had a Debtor who fell behind on three payments. The notice of intent went before the Judge, and the Judge was nice enough to give him some more time to make his payment since he just started a job. By the time the next hearing rolled around, he was due for four payments. He went in to make the payment at the last minute. Unfortunately, the payment didn’t get posted to his account on time and his case got dismissed. The Debtor never contact our office to let us know that he had made the payment so we could try and get him a couple more days.
A few days later his case got dismissed, and of course he blamed our office. He isn’t willing to take responsibility for the fact that he got four payments behind to the Trustee. Now he is in the situation where we can reinstate his case, but his car is not protected until the case gets reinstated or he can refile another Chapter 13.
Since the Debtor has not been working he fell behind on his house and is under and agreed order with his mortgage company. Our office tried to explain that it would probably be best for him to refile and put his mortgage payments through July in his bankruptcy since he is struggling to make them now.
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