Transcript
Hello Richard Shea here with Sawin and Shea. I want to give you an update here related to the March 27th passage of the cares act in Congress. Now this is directed mainly towards people who are involved in active chapter 13 bankruptcies. Under the act, if you were in an act of chapter 13 bankruptcy that was filed and confirmed by the court prior to March 27th and you’ve had a job loss or a situation where you’ve lost revenue or the inability to maintain planned payments in your chapter 13 bankruptcy, we can look at filing a motion to modify your chapter 13 plan with the bankruptcy court. And pursuant to the change in the law, we are allowed to extend your plan for an additional two year time period. So, that’s an additional 24 months. That would allow you as the individual to reduce your payments or allow you to catch up miss payments that had been made to the chapter 13 trustee.
So if you have lost your job or been off work or laid off, you can look at modifying your plan and changing your terms to extend the plan outward longer to let those payments being they’re made over an extended period of time. Now, there would be some additional attorney fees related to that, but of course those would be paid for through your chapter 13 plan. If you have questions and you are experiencing an economic hardship and you need us to look at amending your plan to change the terms to allow you a better opportunity to make it successful, give us a call. We’re here to help.
If a loss of income happens and you are a self employed business owner, with an uncertain forecast for 2021, is it a required that you to modify to extend payments or is it simply an option to do so under the CARES act if payments are behind? Can a regular modification be done within the 5 years if all creditors are still getting a larger amount than if a ch 7 had been filed?
You are not required to modify your plan, it is simply an option that is available if their has been a loss income due to Covid. A regular modification to a chapter 13 plan can be proposed, but you would need to discuss this with your attorney to determine the best way to move forward.