How do I modify my chapter 13 due to reduction of income?

You have not seen enough attorneys as I regularly take over cases from lazy or incompetent attorneys in chapter 13 cases. Having said that there are cases in which the payment to the trustee cannot be lowered no matter how much your income has been reduced as creditors do have certain minimal rights under the bankruptcy code to be paid.

Write your attorney that you want to modify your plan due to a reduction in your income. Send proof of the reduction (paychecks or, if self employed, financial statement for the past two months). In the letter say, detail your past attempts to contact him and that he has refused to take your calls or call you back (detail = date and method, for example, I called your office on June 1st, left a voice mail and your never returned my call). Send the letter via Fedex or UPS so you get a receipt. If he hasn't responded satisfactorily within two weeks, contact the U.S. Trustee's office that serves your bankruptcy court and file a complaint with the ethics board in your area (might be the bar association or the state supreme court). This will either get your money back or it will get the job done. I never heard of an attorney who gets their Chapter 13 fee upfront. One of the advantages of Chapter 13 is the debtor gets to pay the fee over 3 to 5 years.

Your attorney may be a jerk, but unless you are willing to show up to work for no paycheck, it is unreasonable to expect your attorney to perform additional work for you without being paid. You may think that filing a new budget & submitting a new plan for confirmation is easy, and I invite you to try it. The fee charged for your chapter 13 most likely covered your case through confirmation. The cost to submit a modified plan and get it confirmed is probably somewhere north of $1,000.

Find another lawyer. Write a detailed complaint to the cb -3 Trustee and the U.S. trustee. You can also file a grievance with the Office of Lawyer Regulation You can file a modified plan with an updated budget (schedules I and J).

You are always free to retain substitute counsel. You must expect to pay a retainer up front in order to do so. Modification of a plan can be done, but the process involves a motion and notice as well as revised income and expense schedules and a proposed modified plan. I strongly recommend that you try to either convince your current lawyer to assist you or, that you find someone else to step in and take over your case. I don't know of any chapter 13 lawyers who do modification work without charging for their time and expenses.

The new attorney would have to enter his or her appearance in the BK case, do the post confirmation modification, and then withdraw from the case once the objective was accomplished. If the Trustee objects to the modification, there would be a hearing. The attorney would have to factor all of these matters into setting a fee for helping you. Too bad your existing attorney doesn't help out.