How to determine car value

[grantmo]

I am filing chp 7 BK by myself and am trying to find the value of my two cars. I will be filing jointly with my wife as we both have about 15k in debt. I think we can each get a vehicle exemption since we are filing jointly and the exemption here in Missouri is 1000 dollars for a vehicle.
We have two cars, one is a pontiac 1997 that we are making payments on and we still owe about 3300k on it. We do not want to include this in the BK we want to keep on paying for it and all of the payments are current.
My other vehicle is a 1979 Ford pickup truck. I cannot find the value on it. I did find a kelly blue book value for a 1983 rather than '79 and the value was around 800-1000 dollars. The truck is paid for in full. I want to keep both vehicles.
My question is this... How do I show the value of the vehicles and what do I use to find the value?
I read on the old board that LadynRed mentioned to use the Black Book Value and take off 30%, is this the standard and what do I say if the court asks why I came up with this figure. I guess I'll just tell them that LadynRed said to use it, that should stand its ground.

Thanks for any help on this.

[kb9tbq]

http://www.nada.com/

Hope this helps, LadynRed (silvershadow) can help when she drops back in on any other questions you may have on this part.

Have a good night.

[crofttk]

Yup. We used NADA books for ours when we did BK7 back in '97.

Attorney and Trustee said that was fine.

There is a NADA book for "Older Cars and Trucks" aside from the regular book. IIRC, you can access any of the books at the web-site.

[LadynRed]

Look for the 'blackbook' price, which is what the car dealers use. You can get it a www.carquotes.com. Then SUBTRACT 30% from that number and you should be in the ball park.

[grantmo]

Thanks for the input. The websites are great. Looks like the black book is lower than the nada. Either way, I think I can come up with a fair value.

Just one more question about the cars; Let's say the exemption for my car in the state of Missouri is $1000, the value of the car is $4700, and I still owe $3300. So 4700 minus 3300 is 1400, that's about my equity in the car, and I get a $1000 dollar exemption, do I owe the $400 difference to my creditors? Or do they take my car and sell it?


Thanks!

[LadynRed]

Its unlikely the Trustee would take your only transportation. However, if the value/equity is higher than the exemption, the Trustee may require you to REDEEM the difference. In other words, you pay the Trustee the $400 in cash. It that's only a drop in the bucket against your debt, even that may not happen, it wouldn't be worth it.