Contact: John Hartgen
             703-739-0800
             [email protected]

VEHICLE PAYMENTS UNDER A CHAPTER 13 PLAN MUST INCLUDE INTEREST, ACCORDING TO LATEST ABI POLL

July 16, 2007, Alexandria, Va. —A majority of respondents (60 percent) to ABI’s latest online poll agreed that interest must be included in the car payments within a proposed chapter 13 plan for a debtor who purchased the vehicle within 910 of days of bankruptcy. Forty-three percent of respondents “strongly agreed” and 17 percent “somewhat agreed” that the interest should be included in the installment payments proposed in chapter 13 plans for vehicles purchased by debtors for personal use within 910 days of their bankruptcy filing.

Twenty-seven percent of respondents, however, did not agree that interest should be included within the installment payments laid out in a chapter 13 plan for a vehicle purchased by a debtor within 910 days of filing.  Twenty percent “strongly disagreed” and 7 percent “somewhat disagreed” that the interest payments should not be included in the vehicle installment payments of a chapter 13 debtor. Ten percent of the respondents did not know or had no opinion on the issue.

The poll question is based on a March decision by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that reversed a bankruptcy court’s ruling in the case of Daimler Chrysler Services North America LLC v. Taranto. In that case, the court stated that a chapter 13 plan that proposes periodic installment payments to a creditor secured by a debtor’s vehicle purchased for personal use within 910 days of the debtor’s bankruptcy filing must also provide for payment of the interest.

ABI members and members of the public were welcome to submit their response to the statement: “A chapter 13 plan that proposes to pay periodic installment payments to a creditor secured by a vehicle purchased by debtor for personal use within 910 days of his bankruptcy filing, must also provide for the payment of interest. (See Daimler Chrysler Services North America LLC v. Taranto, BAP 6th Cir. No. 06-8034, 3/30/07). The latest ABI Quick Poll was open to the public for voting from June 29-July12.

ABI’s weekly Quick Poll is posted on ABI’s home page, www.abiworld.org. ABI members and the public are invited to respond to a question on a timely bankruptcy or insolvency issue. Visit http://www.abiworld.net/quickpoll/ to access the results of previous ABI Quick Polls.

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ABI is the largest multi-disciplinary, nonpartisan organization dedicated to research and education on matters related to insolvency. ABI was founded in 1982 to provide Congress and the public with unbiased analysis of bankruptcy issues. The ABI membership includes nearly 11,500 attorneys, accountants, bankers, judges, professors, lenders, turnaround specialists and other bankruptcy professionals, providing a forum for the exchange of ideas and information. For additional information on ABI, visit www.abiworld.org. For additional conference information, visit http://www.abiworld.org/conferences.html.