How do the means test health care numbers relate to the same expenses on I and J?
Three of us sat around the table struggling with the means test in a converted case, trustee objections to confirmation of a Chapter 13, and my conviction that a single mother, even getting help from family, should not be exposed to a best efforts objection to her plan. Trying to reconcile the various numbers and explain my analysis to my paralegal, I came up with a measure for squaring up health care expenses reported in two different places in the filing:
MT: health care allowance + medical expenses + heath savings account contribution ≥ I&J: health savings acct. deduction+ medical expenses.
If the MT total for those expenses exceeds the corresponding I and J expenses, something is wrong. You are taking a deduction for expenses which your schedules don’t provide.
Remember that the expenses on B-22 are future expenses. They should bear a close relationship to the expenses on I and J, which is also forward looking.
In my divisions, Chapter 13 trustees object to means test expenses on the actual part of the form that exceed what the debtor reports as his projected expenses.
So, one of the basic quality control checks of a draft petition is to square those two sums.
