District rule

Chapter 13 Car Loans: Middle District of Florida

Written by JaredLast reviewed 2026-08-25

What does the Middle District of Florida require before financing a car in Chapter 13?

It depends entirely on which of the district's five divisions the case is in, because no court-level rule sets a single answer. The Middle District of Florida is served by four standing Chapter 13 trustees, and the court's own trustee directory divides them by division: Douglas W. Neway in Jacksonville, Laurie K. Weatherford in Orlando, Daryl J. Smith across the Tampa and Fort Myers Divisions, and Kelly Remick in the Tampa Division alongside Smith. Each office has published its own procedure for a debtor who wants to incur new debt — most often to buy a car — while a Chapter 13 plan is active, and the four documents this page reviewed don't agree with each other on dollar figures, required documentation, or who has to sign.

That's a real difference from districts where one local rule or one administrative order sets the terms district-wide, as the pillar page's district comparison shows for other courts. In the Middle District of Florida, the closest thing to a district-wide document — the court's own Chapter 13 administrative order — turns out to say nothing on this specific question, covered next.

Do the district's Local Rules or its Chapter 13 administrative order address incurring new debt?

No. The district's Local Rules and both versions of its Chapter 13 administrative order — the current one and the one it replaced — were checked directly for this page, and none of them mentions incurring debt, obtaining credit, or purchasing a vehicle.

The district's Local Rules, effective August 15, 2025, list roughly seventy individual rules; none of them is numbered or titled for a debtor's request to incur new debt the way, for example, the Southern District of Indiana's Local Rule B-4001-3 or the District of New Mexico's Local Rule 3015-6 are. Local Rule 4001-1 — the rule most likely to cover this, since Federal Rule of Bankruptcy Procedure 4001 itself covers "obtaining credit" — turns out to be about the automatic stay only, with no provision on new financing.

The court's own administrative order prescribing procedures for Chapter 13 cases is the document that comes closest to a district-wide Chapter 13 rulebook. The current one is Administrative Order FLMB-2025-1, which applies to cases filed on or after October 1, 2025 and is dated October 1, 2025 over the signature of Chief Judge Jacob A. Brown; it replaced Administrative Order FLMB-2023-3, dated December 4, 2023 and signed by then-Chief Judge Caryl E. Delano, which still governs cases filed between that date and September 30, 2025. Both run 32 numbered paragraphs covering plan payments, secured-creditor treatment, tax refunds, and what counts as a default. Both require the debtor to get the trustee's consent or the Court's approval before spending a tax refund — FLMB-2025-1 at paragraph 24: "Debtor must not spend tax refunds without first having obtained the Trustee's consent or Court approval." Neither order says anything about incurring new debt or buying a vehicle at all: the words "incur," "vehicle," and "automobile" appear nowhere in either one, and "credit" appears only inside the word "creditor." The requirement exists — the pillar page explains why, under 11 U.S.C. §§ 1305(c), 1322(a)(1), and 1327 — but this district's own rulemaking simply doesn't fill in the mechanics. That's left entirely to the four trustees' offices, covered division by division below.

What do the two Tampa Division trustees each require for a car loan?

Different numbers, from two offices that split the same division. The Tampa Division is unusual among the four covered here in having two standing Chapter 13 trustees, Kelly Remick and Daryl J. Smith, and both offices publish a document with the identical title, "Procedure for Incurring Debt" — but the two documents aren't the same.

Kelly Remick's version, printed 6/8/2018 and still the version linked from her office's site as of this writing, states: "In general no car loan with payments over $508.00 per month," bars "luxury cars," and adds a condition the other Tampa-area document doesn't have: "If the Debtor(s) takes possession of the automobile prior to the Trustee's consent being given, or signs a purchase order or loan agreement, consent will be denied."

Daryl J. Smith's version — which carries no printed date on the document itself, but whose file on the trustee's own server shows a last-modified date of August 24, 2026 — states: "In general no car loan with payments over $703.00 per month," also bars luxury cars, but doesn't include Remick's possession-before-consent warning.

Both documents use the same review criteria in the same order: whether the debt is "reasonable, necessary," and won't interfere with the current plan; whether "all Trustee guidelines have been met"; the terms of the loan; then a written response. Neither document states an interest-rate cap — only that the loan's terms, including the rate, must be disclosed. Neither states whether the debtor must be represented by an attorney to submit the request. This page did not locate anything describing how a Tampa Division case gets assigned to Remick's office rather than Smith's, or the reverse.

What does the Fort Myers Division require?

The same document, and the same $703-a-month figure, as the Tampa side of Daryl J. Smith's caseload. The court's trustee directory lists Smith as the sole standing Chapter 13 trustee for the Fort Myers Division, using the same P.O. Box 25001, Bradenton, FL mailing address covered in the table above. This page found no separate Fort Myers-specific vehicle-financing document — Smith's one "Procedure for Incurring Debt" document appears to serve both divisions equally.

What does the Orlando Division's Vehicle Purchase Request require?

No published dollar cap, and only one signature to approve it. Standing Chapter 13 Trustee Laurie K. Weatherford's office posts a one-page "Vehicle Purchase Request" form — its own file metadata shows a creation date of June 27, 2017, and it remains the version currently linked from the office's forms page. The form asks for the dealer's name and address, the purchase price, year, mileage, make and model, any trade-in allowance, and the "Percentage rate per contract," with a printed note next to that line: "(if excessive, may be denied)." Line 6 asks for the "Total new monthly payment," specifying it is "To be paid OUTSIDE the plan," and gives two named reasons a request can be denied — "Interest rate excessive" or "Payment excessive" — without stating what rate or payment would trigger either one.

Approval runs through the trustee's office directly, not a court motion: the form lists three possible signers — Laurie K. Weatherford, Trustee, and two named trustee attorneys, Stuart Ferderer and Ana V. DeVilliers — with a footnote stating, "Only one signature is required for valid approval." The form itself has no line for the debtor's own attorney to sign.

The office's separate "Guidelines for Chapter 13 Debtors" document states the underlying rule in blunt terms, without any dollar figures attached: "You may not incur any debt without the Trustee's or the Court's permission. You may not borrow money from a finance company or a bank... You may not buy anything over time, such as a car or a large appliance... If you do incur debt, without permission, your case may be dismissed." That guidance is broader than the vehicle form — it covers any new debt, not just a car — but it's the only document from this office that states a consequence for skipping the process.

What does the Jacksonville Division's Request to Incur New Debt require?

No dollar cap, but the most specific paperwork and eligibility requirements of the four offices reviewed. Standing Chapter 13 Trustee Douglas W. Neway's one-page "Request to Incur New Debt" form — the version currently linked from the office's site carries a server last-modified date of February 21, 2024 — asks for the lender's name, purchase price, payment amount, interest rate, and loan term, all left blank for the filer to fill in with no ceiling printed anywhere on the form.

What the form does state, in bold print, are two threshold requirements neither Tampa-area document nor Orlando's form states as directly: "YOU MUST PROVIDE AN AMENDED I AND J AND LENDER DOCUMENTS OR A GOOD FAITH ESTIMATE FOR YOUR REQUEST TO BE REVIEWED," and "CASE MUST BE CONFIRMED AND DEBTOR(S) MUST BE CURRENT IN PLAN PAYMENTS." The form also requires the debtor's attorney to sign a certification: "In my opinion, this will not affect the debtor's/debtors' ability to make payments under the Chapter 13 Plan." Final approval is signed directly by "DOUGLAS W. NEWAY, TRUSTEE" — the form describes no court-motion step, though it doesn't say what happens if the trustee doesn't sign.

An earlier version of the same form, last modified on the office's server in March 2020, remains live at a separate URL on the same site. The two are nearly identical: the older one routes submissions to a different staff email address and words the first bold requirement slightly differently ("AN AMENDED I AND J, LENDER DOCUMENTS OR" rather than "AN AMENDED I AND J AND LENDER DOCUMENTS OR"). No dollar figure appears on either version. It's a reminder that more than one version of a trustee's form can be reachable online at once, and that the version with the more recent server date is the one this page treated as current.

Do any of these offices publish the same numbers?

Only on one point: how long review takes, and even that's stated at just two of the four offices. Kelly Remick's and Daryl J. Smith's Tampa-area documents both estimate "approximately 20 working days from the time we receive your COMPLETED forms" — identical language, consistent with both offices working from a shared template that's since diverged on the dollar figure. Orlando and Jacksonville state no turnaround time at all.

No two of the four offices agree on a dollar figure, and two of the four state no dollar figure at all. That's the headline finding for this district: the closest thing to a rule is trustee-by-trustee office practice, and even two trustees covering the same division have published different numbers under the same document title.

What happens if a car loan is taken on without going through one of these offices?

None of the four documents reviewed for this page describes the consequence directly — that risk runs through the Bankruptcy Code itself, the same way it does in every district, and it's covered in full in the motion to incur debt glossary entry. In short: under 11 U.S.C. § 1305(c), a postpetition claim the lender files can be disallowed if the lender knew or should have known that trustee approval was practicable and wasn't obtained. Separately, § 1327(a) binds the debtor to the confirmed plan's terms, and a payment the plan never accounted for can draw a trustee's objection or, in a worse case, a motion to dismiss under § 1307(c)(6) for material default on a plan term.

The one district-specific wrinkle here is Kelly Remick's possession-before-consent warning, quoted above: at her office, taking possession of the car or signing a purchase order before consent is given isn't a gray area — the document states consent "will be denied" outright. This page found no equivalent statement at the other three offices, though that doesn't mean the same underlying risk isn't present.

Where couldn't this page confirm a figure?

Three gaps, stated plainly rather than filled in from another district's numbers or another Florida office's practice. First, no interest-rate cap was located at any of the four offices — all four ask for the rate to be disclosed, and Orlando's form allows denial for a rate that's "excessive," but none states a number. Second, none of the four documents describes what happens next if the trustee's office declines a request — whether the debtor can then file a court motion, and on what timeline, isn't addressed in any of the four sources reviewed. Third, this page did not locate a standing trustee's own vehicle-financing document for the Ocala Division; the court's trustee directory, current as of this writing, lists trustees by division for Jacksonville, Orlando, and Tampa/Fort Myers, but this page did not find a separate Ocala listing or confirm which of the four trustees, if any, administers Ocala cases.

This is general information about four trustees' currently published documents and the district's own court rules; it is not legal advice for a specific case. A filer or attorney relying on any figure above should confirm it directly with the assigned trustee's office — these documents can and do change, as the $508-versus-$703 gap between two offices in the same division shows — and questions about whether a specific purchase will be approved belong with the case's own attorney and trustee, not a website.