United States: Settlement Proceeds Lose Exempt Status in NC When Used to Purchase Land and Mobile Home

Construing North Carolina exemptions law, a federal bankruptcy court held that a Chapter 13 debtor could not claim an exemption in land and a mobile home that he purchased with the proceeds of a workers' compensation settlement agreement. The court noted that the Chapter 13 debtor settled her workers' compensation claim for $200,000 and that she used a portion of the settlement to purchase the land and mobile home. The bankruptcy court found the North Carolina statute [N.C. Gen. Stat. § 97-21] clearly exempted the settlement from claims of creditors, that special status was lost when the funds were converted into another type of asset.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See In re Usery, 2020 Bankr. LEXIS 2765 (W.D. N.C. Oct. 5, 2020)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 89.10.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see

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