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Ninth Circuit Affirms Earlier Decisions Denying Debtor Right to Alter IRS Lien after Bankruptcy

Posted on Jan. 30, 2019

On November 7, 2017, I posted on the case of In re Nomillini in which the debtor sought to limit the secured claim of the IRS based on the confirmation of his chapter 13 plan. The Ninth Circuit, in an unpublished opinion dated December 18, 2018, denied the debtor’s motion to cut off the rights of the IRS lien in debtor’s property. Here, the debtor’s plan did not seek to limit the rights of the IRS as a secured creditor. The court relied on the normal rule that a lien against a debtor passes through the bankruptcy unaltered absent a specific attack on the lien as a part of the bankruptcy proceeding.

The Ninth Circuit stated the general rule as follows:

For a debtor to avoid a creditor’s lien or otherwise modify the creditor’s in rem rights, the debtor’s confirmed plan must do so explicitly and provide the creditor with adequate notice that its interests may be impacted. Id. at 873. Any ambiguity in the plan will be interpreted against the debtor. Id. at 867.

Mr. Nomillini did not mention the IRS lien in his chapter 13 plan. He gave no notice to the IRS during his bankruptcy proceeding that he sought to reduce or eliminate its lien on his property. He sold his home. He entered into an agreement with the IRS that its lien would attach to the proceeds. The sale of the home brought a greater price than anticipated by the IRS when it filed its original lien. Based on the sale price, the IRS amended its claim to increase the amount of its lien claim to match the proceeds. Mr. Nomillini sought to limit the IRS lien claim to the amount of the original claim. He then brought an action seeking to avoid the IRS lien to the extent that it exceeded the original claim. The lower courts dismissed the case and the 9th Circuit affirmed.

Lien claims not only pass through bankruptcy unimpacted (absent a specific challenge) but the amount of a lien claim can change during or after a bankruptcy as the value of the property increases or decreases. When the IRS filed its original claim in this case, it had to value its lien claim and claim any portion not covered by equity in Mr. Nomillini’s property as an unsecured claim. Here, the value of the secured property turned out to be low either because the IRS made a wrong determination at the outset or because the property continued to increase in value. In either event the debtor does not receive a windfall because of the low value in the initial claim.

Once the property was sold, the value of the property was set and the IRS amended its claim up to the amount of the sales proceeds. The Ninth Circuit joins the lower courts in determining that the IRS has the right to do this. Had the property sold for less than the amount of the lien claim that the IRS made, the value of the lien claim would have decreased rather than increased. For this reason creditors often seek to protect themselves from a downward movement of value in secured property by seeking adequate protection. The IRS does not do this often because of the time involved to seek adequate protection and, in cases in which its lien is secured by real property, because of the difficulty in proving that the property will decrease in value.

The case resolves the issue in a manner consistent with existing law. The lesson here is that the value of a lien claim is not fixed at the time of filing bankruptcy.

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