District rule

Chapter 13 Car Loans: Central District of California

Written by JaredLast reviewed 2026-08-25

Does the Central District of California require court approval before you can finance a car in Chapter 13?

Yes, above $1,000, and the district's own mandatory paperwork says so directly. The Chapter 13 Plan form every debtor in this district files — F 3015-1.01.CHAPTER13.PLAN, the version for cases filed on or after April 15, 2019 — states as a term of the plan itself, in Part 2, Section I.F: "Debtor must not incur debt greater than $1,000 without prior court approval unless the debt is incurred in the ordinary course of business pursuant to 11 U.S.C. §1304(b) or for medical emergencies." That's not a local rule sitting off to the side; once the plan is confirmed, 11 U.S.C. § 1327 makes its "provisions ... bind the debtor and each creditor," so this sentence becomes a term the debtor has already agreed to. The Chapter 13 car-loan pillar page covers why new debt generally needs advance permission under §§ 1305(c), 1322(a)(1), and 1327 in every district; this page is about how the Central District of California's own documents answer that question specifically.

Where does the $1,000 figure come from, and is it a cap on the loan itself?

It's a threshold for needing permission, not a ceiling on how large the loan or the vehicle can be. Nothing in the Plan form's Section I.F, or in the mandatory motion form described below, states a maximum loan amount, a maximum vehicle price, or any other dollar ceiling on what a court can approve. The $1,000 figure marks the line above which the debtor needs "prior court approval" before incurring the debt at all — a debtor financing a $25,000 car and a debtor financing an $1,100 appliance cross the same threshold and, on the face of the Plan language, follow the same approval path. That's a different shape from what some other districts publish: the Northern District of Texas caps trustee-approved vehicle financing at a $30,000 loan, a $650 monthly payment, and a 21% interest rate by standing court order, and the Northern District of Ohio's Canton trustee caps at a $550 monthly payment and a 16% interest rate. This district's own documents state no comparable ceiling — only the $1,000 trigger point.

What do the district's own standing trustees say about incurring debt?

Two of them independently corroborate the Plan's $1,000 figure in their own published guidance, in language that goes further than the Plan form does. Amrane Cohen, the standing trustee for Santa Ana and Riverside cases, states in his office's "Information and Guidelines" booklet: "You may not buy anything on credit for more than $1,000.00 unless you get approval from the Court prior to the purchase. The only exception is for emergency medical care." The same document adds, specific to major purchases: "In order to sell, buy or lease a major asset such as a house, a car, etc. or to borrow in excess of $1,000.00 (including buying or refinancing a home or taking out a new car loan), you must obtain permission from the Bankruptcy Court." Notice that Cohen's guide names only the medical-emergency exception — it doesn't repeat the Plan form's separate carve-out for ordinary-course business debt under § 1304(b), which applies only to a self-employed debtor's trade credit and wouldn't typically come up in a consumer car-purchase discussion.

Nancy Curry, a Los Angeles-based standing Chapter 13 trustee, frames the same requirement in terms of consequences rather than a dollar figure: "Court permission is required to sell or refinance any of your property including your residence or other real estate. It is also required to incur additional debt; for example, to purchase or lease an automobile. If you proceed without this permission the transaction may be set aside and your case may be dismissed." Her guidance doesn't restate the $1,000 number in that section, but it independently confirms the same two things Cohen's guide states directly: the approval has to come from the court, and a car purchase specifically is the example she gives.

This page did not locate comparable published incur-debt guidance from the district's other standing trustees to confirm whether their offices layer on anything beyond what the Plan form and motion form already require. A debtor whose case is assigned to a different standing trustee should confirm directly with that office.

What does the mandatory Motion for Authority to Incur Debt actually require?

A specific description of the purchase and the debtor's finances, filed on a court-mandated form, F 3015-1.17.MOTION.BORROW.PP, dated December 2012 in its own footer. The form asks the debtor to state: the confirmed Plan's monthly payment amount and length; what the debtor "desires to purchase," with the proposed purchase and loan agreements attached as an exhibit; the purchase price and the dealership or store name and address; what will remain owing on the loan after any down payment, over how many months and at what monthly payment; the debtor's reasons for wanting the property; and the debtor's current monthly income and expenses — specifically "excluding the Plan payment and the contemplated monthly finance payment" — supported by attached declarations of current and post-petition income and expenses. It closes with an attorney signature line and separate debtor and joint-debtor perjury declarations, and the form itself accommodates a debtor "appearing without attorney" as well as one represented by counsel; nothing on the form states that counsel must sign.

Notably, the form's own caption reads "[No Hearing Required]" — a detail that matters for the next question.

Does the motion actually get a hearing, and is there a stated response window?

Not automatically, and yes — 14 days. The court's own procedural index, The Central Guide, states that this motion "may be served under LBR 9013-1(o)," the district's general "Motions and Matters Determined After Notice of Opportunity to Request Hearing" procedure, and lists the accompanying "Notice of Opportunity to Request a Hearing on Motion [LBR 9013-1(o)]" and "Declaration That No Party Requested a Hearing on Motion [LBR 9013-1(o)(3)]" as part of the standard document package — which matches the motion form's own "[No Hearing Required]" caption. Under that procedure, the notice served on creditors and other parties in interest must state that "any response and request for hearing must be filed with the court and served on the movant and the United States trustee within 14 days after the date of service of the notice." If nobody responds, the moving party files a declaration that no timely response was received and lodges a proposed order — a judge signs it, but no hearing takes place. If a response and request for hearing is filed, the moving party then has to schedule an actual hearing on at least 14 days' notice. The Central Guide's document list — including a "Trustee's Comments on or Objection To" document — indicates the standing trustee reviews and can weigh in on the motion within that same window; see what happens when a trustee denies a request to incur debt for how a contested request plays out more generally.

One nuance worth flagging precisely: LBR 9013-1(o)(2)(E) lists "Motions for approval of postpetition financing" among the matters that "may not be determined by" the negative-notice procedure at all. That phrase isn't defined in the rule text located for this page, and in bankruptcy practice it's more commonly used for Chapter 11 or 12 debtor-in-possession financing under 11 U.S.C. § 364 — a business-credit mechanism distinct from a Chapter 13 consumer's request under §§ 1305(c) and 1322(a)(1) to buy a car, as the motion to incur debt glossary entry explains in detail. That the court's own Central Guide and the mandatory form both route this specific Chapter 13 personal-property motion through LBR 9013-1(o) suggests the district doesn't treat it as "postpetition financing" for purposes of that exclusion — but this page did not find a document that resolves the terminology directly, so it's presented here as an open question rather than a settled one. One further wrinkle, stated for completeness: LBR 3015-1(w)(1), the Chapter 13 rule's own list of motions that "may be made on notice of opportunity to request a hearing pursuant to LBR 9013-1(o)," names four items — the trustee's motion to modify or dismiss, a motion to modify or suspend plan payments, a motion to approve a sale or refinance of the debtor's residence, and an application for supplemental attorney's fees — and the incur-debt motion is not among them. That list is permissive rather than exclusive, since LBR 9013-1(o)(1) separately opens the procedure to any matter that may be set for hearing under LBR 9013-1(d) except those in (o)(2), so the omission isn't dispositive either way.

Why does the court's own index cite a rule subsection that doesn't match the rule's current text?

This page can't say why the court's index carries that citation, but it can establish that the citation is wrong against every published version of the rule, not only the current one. The Central Guide page for this exact topic states: "LBR 3015-1(p) provides the procedure for a chapter 13 debtor to file a motion to incur debt on personal property, such as to borrowing funds to purchase or lease an automobile." But the Local Bankruptcy Rules' own current text — effective May 8, 2025, as posted on the same court's website — shows subsection (p) of LBR 3015-1 governing something else entirely: "Sale or Refinance of Real Property. A sale or refinancing of the debtor's principal residence or other real property must be approved by the court." Nor is this a case of the rule having been renumbered out from under the Central Guide. Archived editions of the district's own local rules show subsection (p) reading "Sale or Refinance of Real Property" continuously: in the 2012 edition of LBRs 3001-1 through 3020-1, in the 2016 edition of LBRs 3003-1 through 3022-1, and in the complete rules effective January 31, 2022. That 2012 edition is contemporaneous with the December 2012 motion form itself, so there is no earlier version of the rule against which the Central Guide's citation would have been accurate. Two other subsections of the same rule, (i) and (l), are marked "INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK" in the current text, but they were emptied for unrelated reasons: in the 2016 edition (i) was "Non-Material Amendments to Plan at the Confirmation Hearing" and (l) was "Chapter 13 Trustee's Fees," neither of which had anything to do with incurring debt. No published edition of LBR 3015-1 located for this page has ever contained an incur-debt-on-personal-property provision at subsection (p) or anywhere else.

The court's own forms index reflects that. On the cacb.uscourts.gov All Forms listing, the two real-property motions carry the rule in their titles — "Debtor's Motion for Authority to Refinance Real Property Under LBR 3015-1(p)" and "Debtor's Motion for Authority to Sell Real Property Under LBR 3015-1(p)" — while the personal-property form is listed simply as "Debtor's Motion for Authority to Incur Debt [Personal Property]," with no rule citation attached. The Central Guide page is the only court publication located for this page that ties this motion to subsection (p).

What isn't in doubt, regardless of which local-rule letter is correct: the $1,000 threshold and the court-approval requirement come from the Plan form itself and are independently confirmed by two standing trustees' own guidance, not from the disputed subsection citation. What the discrepancy affects is the caption of a filing, not whether permission is required. A debtor or attorney who needs to put a rule number on the motion should confirm it with the court or the case's own attorney rather than copy it from the Central Guide page — the mandatory form itself carries no rule citation, and neither does the court's forms index entry for it.

Does anything cap the loan amount, the monthly payment, or the interest rate?

No — none of the documents reviewed for this page state one. The Plan form's Section I.F sets the $1,000 trigger for needing approval but no ceiling above it. The mandatory motion form asks the court to review the purchase price, the loan terms, and the debtor's income and expenses, but the form itself contains no maximum figure for any of those numbers — approval turns on the judge's (or, absent an objection, the default order's) assessment of feasibility, not on a published cap. Neither Cohen's nor Curry's guidance states a payment or rate cap either.

Must the debtor be current on plan payments, or must an attorney sign the request?

Neither condition is stated in the documents this page reviewed, and this page isn't going to import an answer from another district. The Plan form's Section I.F and the motion form itself describe what has to be disclosed — the purchase, the financing terms, and the debtor's income and expenses — without saying plan payments must be current first. That's different from, for example, the Northern District of Ohio's Canton trustee, whose posted vehicle-financing document states plainly that it will issue an initial approval letter only "if the Chapter 13 Plan is in material compliance and there are no Plan delinquencies." Nothing comparable turned up for this district's Plan form, motion form, or either trustee's guidance reviewed here.

On counsel: the motion form itself includes the standard "Individual appearing without attorney" option used across this court's forms, alongside an attorney-signature line, and nothing on the form states that an attorney must sign. That's different from what the pillar page found for a Philadelphia-area trustee, whose own guidance says flatly "All requests must be signed by your attorney." This district's mandatory form doesn't contain that language, though a debtor navigating a contested motion or an objection would likely still want counsel's help regardless of what the form itself requires.

How current are the documents this page relies on, and where should a filer check next?

The Plan form (April 2019, for cases filed on or after April 15, 2019) and the motion form (December 2012) are both still the versions linked from the court's own All Forms listing as of August 2026 — nearly 14 years old, in the motion form's case, without a stated numeric figure to go stale the way a trustee's own payment or rate cap can. The two trustees' guidance documents quoted here are dated 2019 as well: Cohen's Rev. 6.21.2019, Curry's revised August 2019. Local rules and trustee practices can and do change without individual notice to filers, which is exactly what the subsection-(p) discrepancy above illustrates — the district hub is where this site tracks that kind of verified, dated detail district by district rather than repeating one national figure, and why the "30 to 45 day" answer is wrong makes the broader case against generic timelines for this process. A debtor in this district should confirm the current form, the current rule number, and the trustee assigned to their specific case directly with their attorney or the standing trustee's office before relying on anything above.

This is general information about published court and trustee documents, not legal advice for a specific case. Whether a specific purchase will be approved, and what the current procedure is for a specific debtor's assigned trustee, is a question for that debtor's attorney and the trustee's office, not a website.