One of my favorite clubs is Objecting to a Proof of Claim. 

There are a lot of creditors out there that just cannot or will not file a proof of claim correctly.

When a creditor fails to file an appropriate proof of claim, they leave themselves open for an objection, and when you hire an attorney like me, an objection is what you are going to get.

There are a lot of clients who are required to pay all of their excess income into the Chapter 13 plan for the benefit of unsecured creditors.  However if the income exceeds that of the unsecured debt, then you get to keep that money.

To simplify matters, think of your debt as going into one of two trash cans.  In one trash can your past due secured debt such as past due mortgage and car payments go.  That trash can is paid first.

The second trash can is where your unsecured debt, such as credit cards, personal loans and collection accounts go.

Those are the creditors who tend to foul up their proof of claim.

The creditors who really stink at this are the zombie debt buyers.  A zombie debt buyer normally pays a cent or two on the dollar for your debt and tries to collect it.  They pay so little for it because these are old debts that are unlikely to be collected and they have very little supporting documents, if any.

These creditors also like to inflate the numbers on the debt they claim you owe.  For example, I had one creditor who purchased an account that was charged off in 1989 (Bush was still in office, the first one!) and it had a balance of $4300.  That debt buyer calculated interest on the debt and filed a proof of claim for $11,280.

The debt buyer is allowed to do this, but I filed an objection on the grounds that the statute of limitation on debt in Pennsylvania is four years, not four Presidents, and that they did not provide documentation for their debt.

At this point you might be saying “So what?”.  Think about it like this, every $6000 worth of debt that is paid off in a Chapter13 plan is $100 per month.  By killing off this proof of claim, I saved my client $11,280, or $190 per month!

The creditor realized I wasn’t playing games and I had every intention of showing up in Reading and demanding proof of the debt and proof that the statute of limitations did not apply.

The creditor quickly withdrew its proof of claim (12 hours actually) and now my client is off the hook for $11,280 in debt.

This is why you should not file Chapter 13 bankruptcy pro se.  Nearly every one of my clients has a proof of claim that needs to be objected too.  For nearly every one of my clients, the debt I wipe out with objections is more than my fee.

Using a competent, aggressive attorney with a competitive desire to win and beat the daylights out of unscrupulous debtors nearly always pays for itself.

Imagine a classroom full of desks.  At each of those desks there is a child, which represents one of your creditors.  A proof of claim is simply when one of these children raises their hand and says you owe them money.

That is essentially what a proof of claim is.

Creditors don’t just get to raise their hands though, and they can’t call the trustee either, they have to submit a proof of claim in writing.

Click here to see what a proof of claim looks like

A proof of claim should also have proof of the debt (hence the term proof), but most of the time creditors just include a summary page of the debt.

The proof of claim is one of the most important documents in bankruptcy.  It can make or break a bankruptcy case.  It is important to review all proofs of claim for accuracy, or you might wind up paying a lot more than you should in your Chapter 13 case.