District rule

Chapter 13 Car Loans: Eastern District of Michigan (Detroit)

Written by JaredLast reviewed 2026-08-25

Does the Eastern District of Michigan's Southern Division let a trustee approve a car loan without a judge's order?

No — not under the one documented process this review found. Standing trustee David Wm. Ruskin's office publishes a "Stipulation Allowing Debtor(s) to Obtain Credit for Motor Vehicle" (form 335.0226) that routes every vehicle purchase or lease through a bankruptcy judge's signature. The mechanism is a stipulation, not a contested motion — the debtor and the trustee's office agree to the terms first, and the order recites that "no notice is required as this Order does not adversely impact upon the Plan or creditors" — but a judge still signs the resulting order every time. That's a different mechanic than a district where the trustee alone can approve "without further order of this Court": here, the trustee's sign-off is a precondition to the stipulation, not a substitute for the court's.

How many standing trustees serve the Detroit area, and does each publish the same rules?

Five trustees district-wide, three of them Detroit-area, and no. The U.S. Trustee Program's own roster of Chapter 13 standing trustees lists five names under the Eastern District of Michigan: David W. Ruskin and Krispen S. Carroll at Southfield addresses, Tammy L. Terry at a Detroit address, Melissa A. Caouette at Flint, and Thomas W. McDonald, Jr. at Saginaw. The roster lists all five under the district as a whole and does not itself assign any trustee to a division, so this page doesn't claim one. Each Detroit-area case is administered by whichever of the three local offices already has it; this review did not find a current, primary-source document stating exactly how cases are divided among them, and secondary sources describing the split by judge name and case-number ending disagreed with each other, so this page doesn't repeat a specific pairing.

A note on what "division" means here, because the trustee forms and the statute use different words than most secondary sources do. Under 28 U.S.C. § 102(b) the Eastern District of Michigan has exactly two divisions: the Southern Division, which comprises Wayne, Genesee, Oakland, Macomb and nine other counties and holds court at Ann Arbor, Detroit, Flint, and Port Huron; and the Northern Division, which comprises Bay, Saginaw and nineteen other counties. There is no "Detroit Division" — Detroit is a place where the Southern Division sits, which is why Ruskin's form is captioned "EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN / SOUTHERN DIVISION." Flint sits in the Southern Division too, alongside Detroit, not in a separate one.

What is confirmed is that the three offices don't publish the same paperwork:

A debtor whose case sits with Carroll or Terry shouldn't assume Ruskin's form or figures apply. The rest of this page describes Ruskin's published process specifically, because it's the one document this review could fetch and quote.

What does Detroit's Stipulation Allowing Debtor(s) to Obtain Credit for Motor Vehicle require?

Three things before the trustee's office will sign on: proof the financing terms are real, proof the debtor tried to do better, and proof the plan still works. The Stipulation itself states: "The undersigned parties agree to the entry of an Order Allowing Debtor(s) to Obtain Credit for Motor Vehicle and the terms of the finance are available and are attached as Exhibit A. Two or more credit rejections are attached as Exhibit B." The accompanying order explains why the second exhibit matters — it recites that the stipulation follows "after the Trustee was provided with loan/lease estimates and/or documents evidencing Debtor(s)' inability to obtain financing at a lower interest rate."

The order also requires a plan-feasibility check: "Debtor(s) also filed amended Schedules I and/or J disclosing the proposed loan/lease payment and demonstrating the continued feasibility of the Plan." Only once those pieces are in place does the order recite that "the Court finds cause to enter this Order."

The stipulation is signed by the trustee's office — the form names David Wm. Ruskin (P26803) and staff attorneys Christopher P. Reilly (P54168) and Michelle M. Stephenson (P51653) — and by "Attorney for Debtor(s)," with a reason for the request written into a blank on the stipulation itself.

Does this district publish a dollar cap on the amount financed or the monthly payment?

No. The order's financial-terms section is a set of blanks the parties fill in for each case, not a printed ceiling:

That's a different design than a published-ceiling form: some trustees' offices post a fixed number a debtor can rely on before ever contacting the office. Ruskin's form instead builds the number into a negotiated stipulation each time, which means there is no published figure to check in advance — the number a specific debtor gets depends on what the trustee's office agrees to for that case.

Is the right statutory citation § 364, or something else?

Something else, even though Ruskin's own order cites § 364. The order's operative sentence reads: "IT IS HEREBY ORDERED THAT pursuant to 11 U.S.C. §364 and §365 the Debtor(s) shall be allowed to obtain credit to purchase or lease a motor vehicle on the specific terms and conditions as follows:" Section 364 is worth reading closely before treating that as the governing authority for an ordinary consumer purchase, and it is worth stating the objection precisely, because the sloppy version of it — "§ 364 is for corporations" — is itself wrong.

Section 364 is keyed to operating a business. Subsection (a) applies where "the trustee is authorized to operate the business of the debtor under section 721, 1108, 1183, 1184, 1203, 1204, or 1304 of this title," and subsection (b) lets the court authorize the trustee to obtain credit outside subsection (a). Note that § 1304 does sit inside Chapter 13 — so § 364 is not categorically foreign to a Chapter 13 case. But § 1304(a) reaches only "a debtor that is self-employed and incurs trade credit in the production of income from such employment," and § 1304(b) gives that debtor the trustee's § 364 powers for the business. A wage earner financing a car to get to work is not a debtor engaged in business, so the § 1304 bridge never opens and § 364 never engages. Consistent with that, 11 U.S.C. § 1303 — which lists the powers an ordinary Chapter 13 debtor does hold — names §§ 363(b), (d), (e), (f), and (l), not § 364.

The framework this site uses instead, and the one that reaches an ordinary wage earner's car purchase, is 11 U.S.C. §§ 1305(c), 1322(a)(1), and 1327 working together: § 1322(a)(1) puts the debtor's future income under the trustee's supervision, § 1327 binds the debtor and every creditor to the confirmed plan's terms, and § 1305(c) requires a post-petition consumer claim to be disallowed where prior trustee approval was practicable and wasn't obtained. § 365, separately, governs the debtor's power to assume or reject an executory contract or unexpired lease — which has a real connection to leasing a vehicle, unlike § 364. Whatever citation appears on the trustee's own order, this page's own analysis follows the framework covered in more depth on this site's Chapter 13 car-loan pillar page and the motion to incur debt glossary entry.

Is the debtor required to be current on plan payments before requesting a car loan?

The order doesn't say, at least not in so many words. Nothing in the Stipulation or Order text obtained for this page states a current-on-plan-payments requirement the way some other districts' trustee guidance does explicitly. What the order does require is the Schedule I/J update showing "continued feasibility of the Plan" — which would be difficult to demonstrate from a case that's already behind — but that's an inference from the feasibility language, not a stated rule. Where the document is silent, this page says so rather than filling the gap from another district's practice.

How long does court approval last, and what comes after the order is entered?

Thirty days, then two more steps. The order states plainly: "Court approval shall be valid for thirty (30) days after entry." After the vehicle is acquired, two obligations follow on different clocks. First, an undated one: "Debtor(s) shall promptly provide to the Trustee a copy of the financing documents" — the word is "promptly," not a specific day count. Second, a dated one, but conditional: "If, as a result of this transaction, there is a need for a Plan modification it shall be filed within 14 days of the entry of this Order." The order also assigns two other standing obligations regardless of timing — the debtor "shall be solely responsible for insuring this vehicle and complying with all laws for same," and the parties must indicate on the order whether "Payments to be paid by" the Trustee or the Debtor(s) directly.

For why this site won't publish a single national turnaround figure for the trustee-consultation step generally, see why the "30 to 45 day" answer is wrong — this district's own 30-day figure is specific to how long approval remains valid once granted, not to how long the trustee takes to grant it in the first place, and the form states no number for the latter.

What happens if a Detroit-area debtor buys a car without going through this process?

The same two risks that apply nationally under the statute, not anything specific to this district's paperwork. Under 11 U.S.C. § 1305(c), a post-petition consumer claim the lender files under § 1305(a)(2) "shall be disallowed" if the lender knew or should have known that prior trustee approval was practicable and wasn't obtained. Separately, § 1327(a) binds the debtor to the confirmed plan's terms, and taking on an unapproved payment that unbalances the budget can draw a trustee's objection. Ruskin's specific form doesn't add a stated penalty beyond what the statute already provides — it doesn't publish, for example, a stated consequence for skipping the Stipulation process itself. The motion to incur debt glossary entry covers both risks in more depth.

Where can a Detroit-area filer find the current version of this form?

Directly from the trustee's own site, not from this page indefinitely. Ruskin's office posts both a fillable PDF and a Word version of form 335.0226 on its Forms page, where the entry reads "Credit – Stipulation Allowing Debtor To Obtain Credit for a Motor Vehicle (335.0226) (Updated Feb 2026)." That label matches the file itself, which carries metadata showing a February 24, 2026 creation date and a March 13, 2026 modification date — two independent signals pointing at the same revision, and recent enough that a filer should still confirm nothing has changed since, particularly the Exhibit B credit-rejection requirement and the blank financial-terms fields, both of which a trustee's office can revise without notice to anyone outside the case. Debtors whose cases are assigned to Krispen Carroll's or Tammy Terry's offices should ask those offices directly what they currently require, since this review found no comparable published form for either one. This site's district hub tracks other districts' documents the same way — sourced, dated, and flagged as silent where the document itself is silent.

This is general information about a published court and trustee document, not legal advice for a specific case. The Stipulation and Order quoted above reflect one trustee's form as posted in 2026; trustees revise these documents, and the district's other two Detroit-area trustees may handle the same request differently in ways this review could not find published online. A case's own bankruptcy attorney and the standing trustee's office are the only reliable sources for what applies to a specific filing today.