Bankruptcy

Are Gas Cards Exempt In Arizona?

By Joseph McDaniel, Esq.

The Arizona exemption reads "food, fuel and provisions". For six months.

If the debtor has two gas cards worth two hundred each, and lists them as exempt as "fuel", they ought to pass muster because exemptions should be liberally construed in favor of the debtor, and there's no opposing case law.

On the other hand, a gas card is a cash equivilant; and I'd rather my client have an exempt homestead than an exempt homestead account with a hundred grand in it.

Things that are just like money seem a little too tempting to a trustee.

On the other hand, if the gas cards are the only, only arguably non-exempt assets in the case, a trustee probably won't want to make an issue of it, because at $800 dollars and below, some trustees in some cases will stamp "No Assets" on the file, because a trustee has overhead, and below that it sometimes doesn't make economic sense for them to administer a file.

New trustees will sometimes administer any file for fifty bucks. Then they go out of business as trustees.

But in the meantime, they could be inconvenient until then.

NOTHING HERE CONSTITUTES LEGAL ADVICE RE A CHAPTER 7, CHAPTER 13, CHAPTER 11, OR CHAPTER 12. FIND AN ARIZONA BANKRUPTCY LAWYER WHO IS BOARD CERTIFIED IN BANKRUPTCY LAW, AV RATED, AVVO 10 RATED, ON SUPERLAWYERS, OR JUST VERY EXPERIENCED AND A FORMER CHAIR OF SOME BANKRUPTCY SECTION OR COMMITTEE. NOTHING HERE MAY BE USED AS LEGAL ADVICE IN CONNECTION WITH ANY BANKRUPTCY, WHETHER THAT BANKRUPTCY IS IN PHOENIX, GLENDALE, TEMPE, MESA, SCOTTSDALE, OR ANYWHERE ELSE.

Full post as published by Arizona Bankruptcy Attorney Blog on July 07, 2009 (boomark / email).