[David and Sharon Welsh] filed a voluntary Chapter 13 petition [in a federal bankruptcy court]. Their required schedules revealed the following assets: a home in Missoula, Montana, valued at $400,000, encumbered by a secured claim of $330,593.66; a Ford F-250 valued at $10,000, encumbered by a secured claim of $18,959; a 2006 Subaru Outback valued at of $9,500, encumbered by a secured claim of $12,211; a 2005 Toyota Matrix valued at $2,200, encumbered by a secured claim of $1,996; a 2005 Airstream trailer valued at $23,000, encumbered by a secured claim of $39,000; and two 2007 Honda ATVs each valued at $2,700, encumbered by secured claims of $3,065 and $4,500. In addition to their secured debts, the schedules revealed unsecured claims totaling approximately $180,500, the largest of which was their daughter's student loan debt in the amount of $60,000 and a joint debt owed to Bank of America on a line of credit in the amount of $50,000.Mrs. Welsh is employed as a nurse and reported on Schedule I a monthly income of $6,975.40. She also draws a pension of $1,100 per month. Mr. Welsh is retired but listed a monthly income of $358.03 from wages, salary and commissions, as well as Social Security income in the amount of $l,165. Because their income exceeds the median for the state of Montana, the debtors calculated their disposable income according to the means test. * * * They listed their current monthly income as $8,116.31; their current monthly income did not include Mr. Welsh's Social Security income of $1,165 because Social Security income is excluded from the current monthly income calculation. After deducting future payments on secured claims, the debtors were left with a disposable income of $218.12 per month. The Welshes proposed a plan that provided for payments of $125 per month to unsecured creditors for the first thirty months of the plan. After their vehicle loans were paid, the payments would increase to $500 per month for the last thirty months of the plan. The proposed plan would pay off approximately $14,700 of the debtors' $180,500 unsecured debt.The [Bankruptcy] Trustee objected on the ground that the debtors had not proposed their plan in good faith * * * because [they failed] to commit one hundred percent of their disposable income to the plan.* * * *The bankruptcy court * * * rejected the Trustee's argument.[On the Trustee's appeal] the [Bankruptcy Appellate Panel (BAP) for the Ninth Circuit] affirmed the bankruptcy court's judgment.* * * *In this appeal, the Trustee * * * maintains that, in determining whether the Welshes proposed their Chapter13 plan in good faith, the bankruptcy court * * * should have considered Mr. Welsh's Social Security income.* * * *In 2005, Congress * * * enacted the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act ("BAPCPA"). The good faith requirement * * * remained the same, but there were significant changes with respect to the calculation of disposable income. Before the BAPCPA, bankruptcy judges had the authority to determine a debtor's ability to pay based on the individual circumstances of each case and each debtor. Congress replaced this discretion with a detailed, mechanical means test, which requires debtors with above-median income to calculate their "disposable income" by subtracting specific expenses from "current monthly income," as defined by the Bankruptcy Code. For our purposes, several elements of this calculation are important. The debtor begins with his "current monthly income," which, by definition, explicitly "excludes benefits received under the Social Security Act." The debtor then subtracts living expenses based on the Internal Revenue Service's "Collection Financial Standards," a detailed series of averages for living expenses that the Service uses to calculate necessary expenditures for delinquent taxpay-ers. The debtor also subtracts his averaged payments to secured credi-tors due during the following sixty months. [Emphasis added.]As is the case here, the manner in which the means test calculates "disposable income" may underes-timate the amount of actual funds that a taxpayer has available to pay unsecured creditors. A debtor who receives Social Security income * * * does not have to account for that income when calculating "disposable income" according to the means test. * * * The result may be that * * * little "disposable income," as that figure is calculated, remains to pay unsecured creditors.* * * *Here, the Trustee does not contend, of course, that the calculation of disposable income should have incorporated Social Security income; the statutory language is clear to the contrary. Instead, he concedes that disposable income was calculated correctly under the BAPCPA, but nevertheless maintains that the Welshes' failure to dedicate Mr. Welsh's Social Security income to the payment of unsecured creditors requires a conclusion that the plan was not proposed in good faith * * *. We cannot conclude, however, that a plan pre-pared completely in accordance with the very detailed calculations that Congress set forth is not proposed in good faith. To hold otherwise would be to allow the bankruptcy court to substitute its judgment of how much and what kind of income should be dedicated to the payment of unsecured creditors for the judgment of Congress. Such an approach would not only flout the express language of Congress, but also one of Congress's purposes in enacting the BAPCPA, namely to reduce the amount of discretion that bankruptcy courts previously had over the calculation of an above-median debtor's income and expenses.* * * *We conclude that Congress's adoption of the BAPCPA forecloses a court's consideration of a debtor's Social Security income * * * as part of the inquiry into good faith * * *. We, therefore, affirm the judgment.

legal reasoning question

1- What Bankruptcy Code requirements were at the center of this case?

2- On what ground did the trustee contend that the debtors had not proposed their Chapter 13 plan in good faith?

3. How did the court rule with respect to the trustee's argument? Why?

4- In evaluating a debtor's petition, what factors should be part of a good-faith analysis? Should consideration of the calculation of disposable income play a role? Why or why not?