Can I Reduce My Car Payment in My Chapter 13 Bankruptcy?

In both Oregon and Washington, you can under certain circumstances reduce the amount that you have to pay back to your car lender by filing a Chapter 13 Bankruptcy. This can obviously represent a huge savings to many debtors in the Vancouver and Portland metro areas.

Generally speaking, as long as the car loan is at least 910 days old, you can reduce the amount you pay back from the actual contract amount owing at the time of the of filing your Chapter 13 Petition to the resale value of your vehicle.

For example, if you financed a car at least 910 days ago and you now owe $10,000 and the car is now worth $5,000, you can reduce the amount of the car loan to $5000, the present value of the car.Better yet if you financed the car 910 days ago and you are stuck with a bad interest rate, it will be reduced to roughly eight percent.

As you can see, the savings that can be realized on car loans alone often make the filing of a Chapter 13 Petition in either the Vancouver or Portland Bankruptcy Court worthwhile.