The United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas has proposed new local rules to be effective Jan. 1, 2011. The first major category of change concerns a simplified mechanism of approval of a debtor’s plan of repayments for a Chapter 13 plan. Once the creditor’s meeting with the debtor and trustee is concluded, the trustee will file a recommendation concerning the plan proposed by the debtor. If the trustee recommends it and there is no objection timely from anyone, the judge may even confirm the plan without a further hearing or at least not require the debtor’s presence. This is a time-saver for the debtor and avoids the client having to miss work unnecessarily. The second major change concerns plan modifications necessary after a plan has already been approved. If the debtor wants to change the plan, the debtor’s attorney must either file a new amended wage order for withholding or make new electronic pay arrangements. Further, the Court plans to issued a new uniform motion to amended confirmed plans to deal with situations where mortgage amounts are changed or reset, thus changing the amount of the debtor’s plan payments. Again, the goal is to achieve consistency and benefit the debtor in having the correct amount withheld from pay to satisfy a variable mortgage and avoid being in default. Too often, various or different courts will require entirely different data to allow the approval of a plan modification and resulting different wage order. The problem with such delay is that the debtor can begin inadvertently falling behind on required mortgage payments if the debtor is in a variable rate plan and the mortgage amount has increased. A creditor’s right to object to the debtor using a plan amendment rather than a full plan modification is preserved under the proposed new rules.