Hearings After The Bankruptcy Meeting – You Don’t Have to Go
In almost every Chapter 13 case, you will only have to attend a single bankruptcy meeting at the Courthouse. At this short meeting, you must bring your Driver’s License and Social Security Card. The Chapter 13 Trustee will go over the details of the plan to put it on course to being approved by the court. This meeting usually happens around 30-40 days after the case is filed. Afterwards, there may be more hearings set on your case that you do not need to attend. Hearings after the bankruptcy meeting are completely normal, but you do not have to go to any of them.
Hearings After the Bankruptcy Meeting – Part of the Normal Process
The process of approving your Chapter 13 plan with the court is called the “confirmation process.” This starts right after your bankruptcy meeting. During this process, you must continue to make your normal Chapter 13 payment the same each month. In fact, you can pretty much ignore this “confirmation process.” All you need to do is make your monthly payment. If we need anything from you or have any questions, we will contact you to get the information. You may receive notices from the court, but generally, you can just ignore and discard these notices. We receive them automatically also.
Why am I getting these Objections and Hearing Notices?
In almost every Chapter 13 case, you will receive a series of hearing and objection notices. This is simply the process by which your Chapter 13 reaches confirmation. The Trustee is actually not objecting to your whole plan or to your case at all. The trustee is only objecting to a very narrow section that needs to be altered somewhat for your plan to be confirmed.
You and your attorney both will receive these notices on your bankruptcy case. We will make the necessary changes to your plan accordingly. Many times a hearing will be set with the Judge at the Courthouse. This is normal and commonplace. You will not need to attend these hearings. In fact, these hearings usually never end up taking place! We will let you know if for some reason you actually need to go to a Chapter 13 hearing. This is exceedingly rare and virtually never happens! You would probably even know about this before we filed your case. If we did not tell you to go, you do not need to go to the hearing.
