Payment Plan for Chapter 13

[shengnes]

When making a Payment Plan for Chapter 13 do they use the Means Test as your payment plan or do they do an Income / Expense sheet and go off of that to submit your plan?

[sarge12]

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@shengnes wrote:

When making a Payment Plan for Chapter 13 do they use the Means Test as your payment plan or do they do an Income / Expense sheet and go off of that to submit your plan?

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I am not sure what the difference is....but it will normally be fairly easily affordable.

[shengnes]

The way the means test that I looked at online was set up the amount you can dedect is a federal guideline not your actual expenses. So I was wondering which one is used the federal guidelines or your actual expenses.

[sarge12]

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@shengnes wrote:

The way the means test that I looked at online was set up the amount you can dedect is a federal guideline not your actual expenses. So I was wondering which one is used the federal guidelines or your actual expenses.

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I think it would be amount of disposible income after normal expenses, and would be a percentage of that. According to what I read, if disposible income is under a certain amount the payments will be limited to 3 years, and if higher it may run as long as 5 years.

[sarge12]

I want to elaborate on my previous post...I have filed ch13 before. To the best of my memory they had me fill out an expense form of probably 20 pages at least that I was to put absolutely everything down for expenses...and the lawyer told me to try not to put down less than was normal. Since I was single at the time my eating out expenses were very high. After these expenses were deducted I think they set up repayments for about 75% of what was left...that is all from memory of 30+ years ago, so may not be exact and laws may have changed.

[Anonymous]

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sarge12 wrote:

I want to elaborate on my previous post...I have filed ch13 before. To the best of my memory they had me fill out an expense form of probably 20 pages at least that I was to put absolutely everything down for expenses...and the lawyer told me to try not to put down less than was normal. Since I was single at the time my eating out expenses were very high. After these expenses were deducted I think they set up repayments for about 75% of what was left...that is all from memory of 30+ years ago, so may not be exact and laws may have changed.

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IMPE - They used the means test to only determine whether I could file 7 vs 13. Then I had to fill out the forms you described below, and my payment was calculated similar to how you've descired.  This was in 2011.