If you file for bankruptcy and get a discharge, but six months later receive an inheritance, can the trustee take your inheritance to repay your creditors?
If you file for bankruptcy and get a discharge, but six months later receive an inheritance, can the trustee take your inheritance to repay your creditors?
In a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, an inheritance that you become entitled to receive within 180 days of filing is supposed to be reported to the trustee, so that it can be applied for the benefit of your creditors. If this is a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, with its being six months after discharge, that period would be long over and the inheritance would be free of any claims by the trustee or creditors.
In a Chapter 13 bankruptcy, even past the initial 180 days, it is possible that the trustee will try to claim the inheritance on behalf of creditors, and courts generally allow the trustee to do so during the repayment period -- but if there has been a final order of discharge at the end of the repayment plan, with an additional six month passage of time, the debtor should be in the clear.
You need to be careful. Receipt of the inheritance is not relevant. What is relevant is when you become entitled to it. Your rights to the inheritance become solidified at the moment of death. If your benefactor dies within six months after you file bk (Chapter 7 - as pointed out above, there are different rules if you are in a Chapter 13), the inheritance, if not subject to some exemption, goes to the Trustee regardless of how long it takes for you to receive it.
Des.