If you are behind on your car or truck loan and a Chapter 7 case will not help you enough, file a Chapter 13 case instead so that you can keep that vehicle.
I laid out your options with vehicle loans under Chapter 7 in my last blog:
1. Surrender the vehicle and discharge (write off) any “deficiency balance”–the often large amount that outside of bankruptcy you would still owe after the creditor sells off your vehicle for less than the loan balance. The vehicle’s gone but so is all your debt.
2. Keep the vehicle and maintain the regular payments if you’re current. Or if you are behind, pay the full amount of back payments so that you are current within a month or two of filing the bankruptcy case. In both of these situations, you will almost certainly be required to sign a “reaffirmation agreement” renewing your full liability on the vehicle loan.
But what if you absolutely must keep your vehicle, and simply won’t be able to scrape up the money to catch up within a month or two after filing? Some creditors may be somewhat more flexible—giving more time or even putting missed payments “at the end of the loan.” But these situations are relatively rare, and may not help you enough. Then it’s time to consider the Chapter 13 option with your attorney.
Keep the Vehicle through a Cram-Down
If you meet one straightforward condition, Chapter 13 gives you some tough medicine indeed, way beyond just buying you more time to pay the missed payments. Through the so-called cram-down, you get to re-write the loan—disregarding any missed payments. The balance on the loan is reduced to—crammed down to–the fair market value of the vehicle (assuming that’s less than the loan balance). Sometimes the interest rate can be reduced and often the loan term can be extended. The combined effect of all this is usually to reduce the monthly payment amount, often significantly. The amount of total savings depends on the details of your case, but most of the time you get the vehicle free and clear at the end of the Chapter 13 case after paying significantly less than you would have otherwise.
So what’s the condition you have to meet to be able to do this cram-down? The vehicle loan must have been entered into more than 910 days (about two and a half years) before filing your Chapter 13 case. If your vehicle loan is not at least that old, no cram down.
Keep the Vehicle without a Cram-Down
You may not qualify for a cram-down because your loan is not old enough, or a cram-down could simply not do any good because your vehicle is worth more than the loan balance. But Chapter 13 can still be helpful, by not being obligated to catch up quickly on the back payments. And in the right circumstances, your monthly vehicle loan payments can be reduced, giving you more money for living expenses or to pay other important creditors.
Surrender the Vehicle
To be clear, although Chapter 13 gives you some big advantages if you are keeping your vehicle, if you don’t need that vehicle you can surrender it just as you can in a Chapter 7 case.
The difference is that instead of the “deficiency balance” being discharged without the creditor receiving anything as in the vast majority of Chapter 7 cases, under Chapter 13 that “deficiency balance” is added to the rest of the pool of general unsecured creditors.
What’s the effect of that? In most cases it doesn’t cost you anything, nothing more than what you would have paid to complete your Chapter 13 case without that “deficiency balance” included. Why? Because in most Chapter 13 plans, you are required to pay a certain amount based on your budget, or a certain minimum amount to the unsecured creditors based on assets you are protecting. So in those cases having an extra chunk of unsecured debt merely shifts how the creditors divide up among themselves the same amount of your money.
But there are some uncommon situations in which adding that “deficiency balance” to your unsecured debts would increase the amount you would have to pay into your Chapter 13 plan. Discuss whether any of those apply to you before deciding whether surrendering your vehicle in a Chapter 13 is in your best interest.