The question before the Court was whether to grant the trustee’s motion to modify the debtors’ confirmed chapter 13 plan over the objection of the debtors. The trustee moved to modify the confirmed plan because one of the debtors received an inheritance during the latter months of the plan term. The debtors opposed the motion to modify arguing they had not experienced a substantial and unanticipated change in financial condition. The Court granted the motion in part and denied the motion in part.

An involuntary Chapter VII bankruptcy petition was filed against Yellow Poplar Lumber Company, Inc. under the Bankruptcy Act of 1898. The case was closed and then later reopened when the bankruptcy estate received proceeds from gas wells on property Yellow Poplar had an interest in at the time of its bankruptcy. The Trustee was left with $422,857.12 in unclaimed funds, which were transmitted to the Clerk of this Court. The issue before the Court is which version of Section 66 of the Bankruptcy Act applied: the 1956 version or the version in effect when the bankruptcy case was pending. The statute, as amended in 1956, provided that unclaimed funds were not subject to escheat under the laws of any state. The State of South Carolina asserted that under the pre-1956 version the funds are subject to escheat back to individual States where deceased shareholders who left no heirs were located. While Yellow Poplar went bankrupt in 1928, the natural gas royalties that give rise to the unclaimed funds did not manifest themselves until many decades after the case was closed. Since the funds did not exist prior to 1956, and therefore could not have escheated to any state prior to the date of amendment, the Court held that the 1956 amendment to Section 66 applies. As the unclaimed funds are not subject to escheat, the Court denied the State of South Carolina’s motion to pay the unclaimed funds into the registry of the court and then transfer the case and the funds back to the District of South Carolina.

In this case, the Chapter 7 Debtor filed a motion to impose sanctions against a creditor alleging that the creditor violated the automatic stay and the discharge injunction by making 50 or more collection calls to the Debtor and his family members. The Debtor failed to redeem the collateral or enter into a reaffirmation agreement regarding the vehicle, so the Court found that the timing of the creditor’s action in the case was more appropriately governed by the discharge injunction than the automatic stay. The Court held that the Debtor failed to meet his burden of proof that the creditor violated the discharge injunction as the evidence showed that the creditor was not trying to coerce the Debtor to make a payment he did not want to make or attempting to collect a debt from the Debtor as a personal liability, but instead was calling when the payments were either due or late to determine if the Debtor wanted to perform under his contract to stave off repossession. Therefore, the Court denied the motion with a word of caution to the creditor that there comes a point where the sheer volume of calls tips a legitimate inquiry as to intent into coercive behavior.

The chapter 13 trustee objected to the debtor’s use of Virginia Code § 34-13, and that section’s reference to unused exemption amounts under Virginia Code § 34-4, to claim an exemption in personal property not used as her primary residence. The Court declined to read prohibitive language into the Virginia Code that was not present. Because Virginia Code § 34-13 by its terms permits a householder in Virginia to claim an exemption in personal property up to the value of any unused portion of the exemption to which she is entitled to claim under Virginia Code § 34-4, the Court found that the debtor was entitled to claim an exemption under Virginia Code § 34-13 in her personal property. The Court thus overruled the chapter 13 trustee’s objection.