Bankruptcy Q&A

I paid off my Chapter 13 Plan early and it was after I received pay off numbers from the trustee's office, so I can tell you how my Plan proceeded.

My suggestion to you is to contact the trustee's office about the status of your plan and let them know your records show you have paid your plan in full. A word of caution: the trustee will want extra money in your account to cover any final accounting fees so be prepared to pay another month's plan payment. The concern you must have is to be certain where your account stands with the trustee's office and the accounting before you decide to quit making your monthly plan payment. Like I wrote, the trustee's office may want you to continue paying until they look at your case and make sure you are done. You definitely want to avoid any problems with the trustee at the end of your plan! I paid in something like 2 extra month payments before the trustee would run the final accounting. They wanted to be certain they had money in there to cover any possible shortage. My experience is the trustee's accounting records were one month behind in their payoff calculations. When I paid off my account early there was extra money which the Trustee refunded right away once the final accounting was done.

Anyway, be sure the trustee has everything they need and you have their direction to stop your monthly payments. Once the trustee is happy they have enough money to cover their fees for accounting (remember part of your plan payment is to cover their costs too)and told you there is no longer a need to make your monthly payment, then you wait for the Trustee's office to run a final accounting. For me this took several months. One day I received my discharge in the mail.

You do not need to have your lawyer do any of this for you. Truthfully once your Plan is confirmed you don't need your lawyer for anything. My attorney did not help with my early payoff. I did not want to incur any more attorney fees so I just contacted the Trustee myself and took it from there.

My Experian credit history reads: "Current Disposition - Discharged CH-13; Current Disposition date 09/12/2003" Allow 2 months for the discharge information to be picked up from the public records.

Hope this helps.

Carolyn