A Chapter 13 payment isn’t total debt divided by 60. That assumption leads a lot of people in Washington, DC to either panic about affordability or underestimate what the plan will actually cost them. The real number comes from three separate legal tests, and whichever produces the highest monthly figure is the one the court confirms. Understanding how those tests interact and how DC’s specific income figures and exemption rules feed into them gives you a realistic baseline before you ever sit down with an attorney.
At The Belmont Firm, our managing partner, Maurice “Mac” VerStandig, has served on the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Columbia’s Bench-Bar Local Rules Committee alongside Chapter 13 Trustee Rebecca A. Herr and Chief Judge Elizabeth Gunn. That committee shapes how local Chapter 13 practice actually works. What follows reflects that ground-level knowledge of how DC courts handle these cases.
What Actually Determines Your Chapter 13 Monthly Payment
A confirmed Chapter 13 plan must satisfy three independent requirements, and the payment is set at whichever level clears all three. The first test requires that secured and priority creditors be paid in full over the plan term. The second requires that general unsecured creditors receive at least what they’d have recovered in a Chapter 7 liquidation. The third requires that above-median-income filers commit all disposable income to the plan for the entire applicable commitment period, as defined under 11 U.S.C. section 1325(b).
Each month, you make one combined payment to the Chapter 13 standing trustee, whose office then distributes funds to each creditor class according to the confirmed plan. You don’t manage separate payments to individual creditors during the life of the case.
How Income & DC’s Median Figures Determine Your Plan Length
The first step in calculating your disposable income obligation is determining your current monthly income, or CMI: your average gross income over the six full calendar months before the filing date, drawn from all sources. Official Forms 122C-1 and 122C-2 (the Chapter 13 means test forms) walk through this calculation in detail.
Your CMI is then compared to the median family income for a household of your size in the District of Columbia. For cases filed between November 1, 2025 and March 31, 2026, those figures are:
- One-person household: $83,202
- Two- or three-person household: $157,259
- Four-person household: $162,327
The jump from a one-person to a two-or-more-person household in DC is unusually steep compared to most states, and it matters directly. If your annualized CMI falls below the median for your household size, the court can confirm a three-year plan. If it exceeds the median, the applicable commitment period extends to five years. A longer plan spreads more payments across more months, which sometimes lowers the monthly figure, but it also means more total payments over time.
Secured & Priority Debts the Plan Must Pay in Full
Two categories of debt must be paid completely through the plan regardless of what your income and expense analysis produces.
Priority Debts
Back child support, alimony arrears, and taxes incurred within the three years before filing all carry priority status. The plan must repay these in full before general unsecured creditors receive anything.
Secured Arrearage Cure
If you fell behind on a mortgage or car loan before filing, Chapter 13 lets you cure that arrearage through the plan while resuming regular payments going forward. The total arrearage as of the petition date is divided across plan payments. Whether the ongoing mortgage payment flows through the trustee or goes directly to the lender depends on local practice and, in DC, on whether you were current at the time of filing.
Both categories set a hard floor on the monthly payment. The disposable income calculation can only raise that floor, not lower it.
How DC’s Exemption Choice Affects the Minimum Payment
This is where Washington, DC diverges significantly from most jurisdictions, and where a lot of national guides fail DC filers.
DC allows filers to choose between the District’s own exemption set and the federal bankruptcy exemptions. Whichever system you select applies to the entire case. You can’t mix and match individual exemptions from both.
The homestead exemption is where that choice carries the biggest financial consequence. DC’s homestead exemption protects 100 percent of home equity, provided you’ve owned the home for at least 1,215 days before filing. Homeowners who haven’t met that threshold receive more limited protection. The federal homestead exemption, by contrast, caps protection at $31,575 for a single filer or $63,150 for a married couple filing jointly. Any equity above the applicable limit is nonexempt.
That distinction directly affects your monthly payment through the best-interest-of-creditors test, the second of the three floors described above. That test requires general unsecured creditors to receive at least as much through your Chapter 13 plan as they would have recovered if a Chapter 7 liquidation trustee had sold your nonexempt assets. A DC homeowner with $200,000 in home equity who chooses the federal exemption system would have roughly $168,425 in nonexempt equity that must be paid to unsecured creditors over the plan term. The same homeowner choosing DC’s exemption system, who has satisfied the 1,215-day ownership requirement, would have zero nonexempt home equity. That single decision can shift the monthly payment by hundreds of dollars.
Who Collects & Reviews Your Plan Payment in DC
Rebecca A. Herr has served as the Chapter 13 Standing Trustee for the District of Columbia since 2019. Her office receives your monthly payment and distributes it to creditors in the order the confirmed plan specifies. The standing trustee also collects a percentage commission on all funds disbursed, a fee set by the U.S. Department of Justice and built into the plan payment rather than billed separately. Your actual monthly figure is therefore slightly higher than the sum needed to pay creditors alone.
Before any of this becomes binding, the proposed plan goes through a confirmation hearing where the trustee and any objecting creditors can raise concerns about whether the plan meets the legal requirements described above. The confirmed plan, not the initial proposal, sets the final payment amount.
What to Gather Before Running the Numbers
We can’t accurately calculate a Chapter 13 payment without specific documentation. Bringing the following to a consultation allows for a realistic projection rather than a rough estimate:
- Six months of income documentation covering all sources, including pay stubs, self-employment records, rental income, and any regular support received
- A current mortgage statement showing the outstanding balance, monthly payment, and any listed arrearage amount
- A recent property valuation such as an appraisal, a lender’s assessed value, or a credible market estimate to establish current equity
- Tax returns for the past two years, particularly relevant for priority tax debt and self-employment income verification
- A complete creditor list separating secured loans, priority obligations, and general unsecured accounts
- Car loan statements including payoff balance, interest rate, and any arrearage if payments have been missed
The exemption choice and the income-to-median comparison are the two variables most likely to change what a DC filer actually owes each month, and neither can be evaluated without household-specific numbers. The Belmont Firm offers free initial consultations to walk through these calculations for your specific situation before any plan is filed. Reach us at (202) 875-8445.