Even though you passed the means test the U.S. trustee, your case trustee, or even your creditors can review your bankruptcy case and argue that by the totality of the circumstances it would be abuse for this particular high income debtor to discharge all of their debts in Chapter 7 and that you should be in some other chapter of the bankruptcy code that requires you to make some sort of payment to creditors.

The reason this comes up is that the way the means test is written debtors get a lot of credit for making payments on secured debt. So if the debtor has a primary residence, a vacation house, and expensive cars, then that debtor gets a dollar for dollar deduction for all of that secured debt from the amount of their gross income. If there’s enough of those deductions the debtor would be under the amount of net income necessary to require them to be in Chapter 13 and that way they pass the means test.

Someone looking at that picture, at the schedules, at the debtor’s income and lifestyle might protest that the debtor shouldn’t be in Chapter 7 because it’s not fair for them to be able to retain that kind of luxury item and not pay anything back to their creditors. Under those circumstances, unless the debtor can show some sort of extraordinary circumstances, Chapter 7 relief will be denied and they will have to file a Chapter 13 case.