by The snapshot rule governs whether the chapter 13 debtor may claim a homestead exemption for one residence after the residence for which she originally claimed the exemption was subject to foreclosure. Earl v. Lund Cadillac, LLC, No. 16-16428 (9th Cir. Nov. 27 2017) (unpublished).
When Rachael Earl filed her chapter 13 petition she owned two residential properties: Claiborne and Sunnyvale. She resided in the Claiborne property and she claimed it as her homestead exemption. Unable to stop the foreclosure proceedings on that property, however, Ms. Earl converted to chapter 7 and sought to claim an exemption in the Sunnyvale property. The bankruptcy court sustained the unsecured creditor’s objection, and the district court affirmed.
White v. Stump, 266 U.S. 310, 313 (1924) teaches that exemptions are fixed at the time of filing the petition. Under this “snapshot” rule, exemptions claimed post-petition may be allowed only if they could have been claimed on the petition date. Likewise, while under Rule 1009(a) the debtor has right to amend her exemptions at any time before the case is closed, the amended exemption must still be one she could have claimed on the petition date.
The court looked to Arizona law to determine whether Ms. Earl could have claimed the Sunnyvale property as her homestead at the time she filed her petition. In Arizona, entitlement to a homestead exemption depends upon the debtor’s actually residing on the property. In this case, Ms. Earl lived, at all relevant times, in the Claiborne residence. The fact that she converted from chapter 13 to chapter 7 did not change the result, even if the court were to agree with those cases looking at exemptions as of the conversion date, as Ms. Earl still lived in the Claiborne property at the time of the conversion.
Because Ms. Earl had no right to claim the exemption under state law, she had no right to amend her bankruptcy exemptions to claim it post-petition. The court affirmed.