Steve's Bankruptcy Blog

As you saw from my last post, the court got virtually nothing for everything we surrendered as part of our bankruptcy estate.

All along I had suspected the trustee of trying to get us to buy our stuff back at the appraised value. This way… she makes more money, by more “commission” and the bankrupt parties get to keep their stuff. I suspect most people want their stuff… so they pay appraised values.

It is a pain… having to give everything up. This is stuff we have had for years, for some items there was sentimental value… I gave up all my tools, household repair items, like I said pretty much everything. I imaging for a lot of people this would be difficult, and they decide not to. In our case, since we wanted a true “fresh start” and with giving up the house (2800 square feet) and moving to a small apartment, we new there would not be room anyway.

Bummer.

I can’t believe my eyes. I checked pacer, and saw a report of asset sales from the trustee. If you remember, the trustee had an appraisal done to find the value of our property, as she disputed the value 3 times we finally worked out what she called the overages… then agreed to the value.

With our cars and all our belongings not counting the stock certificate my wife has to surrender, she stated it was worth almost $20K if we had wanted to keep it, this is what we would have needed to pay the estate.

BUT NO… In our opinion it was way over valued, especially the cars… so we gave everything up. Assuming that when sold, the minimum bids would be the appraised values, and my cerditors would actually get something out of it.

Well… all our stuff was auction and purchased for a whopping $1800 yes, thats right… what she valued at almost $20,000.00 got sold for $1800.

So take the trustees cut (about 10%) sales tax to the state of florida, fees associated with the sale… theres probably only a couple hundred dollars left… and remember she gets $350 an hour to manage the estate.

That leaves NADA for the creditors.