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Show Chapter 13 Is A Way To Avoid Bankruptcy If an ill turn of events has placed your family head over heels in debt, but you have a strong desire to repay your debts, you do have an alternative alterna-tive to bankruptcy. It's the wage earner's plan spelled out in Chapter 13 of the Bankruptcy Bankrupt-cy Act. DR. DON L. Snyder, extension exten-sion economist, Utah State University, explained that this provision in the act, allows a debtor to repay creditors in a systematic way free from harassment by creditors. The debtor files a petition, a list of debts and assets, and a repayment repay-ment plan in the U.S. District Court. The repayment plan must be approved by the court and a majority of the creditors. It covers an agreed upon period during which the debtor is supervised su-pervised and protected by the courts. It allows the debtor basic living expenses and provides pro-vides for payments to be made to a court appointed trustee. The trustee, in turn, pays the creditors. SNYDER cautions that the wage earner plan will be no more than an expensive way to delay bankruptcy, unless two ingredients are present: (1) you have enough income to meet basic living expenses and still have money left over to pay creditors: (2) you accept a great deal of self-discipline while going through the plan, He said that statistics show that a large number of people who try the wage earner plan don't complete it. Realize that the wage earner's ear-ner's plan will cost you money. Snyder explained that the filing fil-ing fee is $60. You will also' have to pay the court appointed trustee and an administrative admi-nistrative fee of "up to" 10 percent (usually it is 10 percent) per-cent) of the debts repaid. Plus, you will have the expense of the attorney's fee. THE EXTENSION economist econom-ist stresses that all this points up the wisdowm of managing as much as possible, to avoid getting the family into a heavy debt situation, kj |
