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Epiq Frees Large Trusteeship to Focus on the Work at Hand
- Trustee Services
Trustee Joseph (Jody) Bledsoe and his Controller/Office Manager Norma Wygand run a large trusteeship for the Eastern District of North Carolina. They currently handle about 5500 cases, but prior to COVID, that figure approached 10,000 cases.
Trustee Joseph (Jody) Bledsoe and his Controller/Office Manager Norma Wygand run a large trusteeship for the Eastern District of North Carolina. They currently handle about 5500 cases, but prior to COVID, that figure approached 10,000 cases.
Norma has worked with Epiq Trustee Services for almost 30 years, while Jody has worked with them since his designation as Trustee in 2014. They attribute their long-standing relationships with Epiq to the company’s responsiveness, which goes well beyond returning calls and issue resolution.
“I told Epiq that I wanted to be able to do a means test within Epiq’s Case Power software. This isn’t something they offered. But they sat down with me to really understand what I wanted and to see how it looked, and they eventually put it in place.”
Additional services make the difference
With only a couple of software options approved for Chapter 13 Trustees, Jody finds significant differences between the options. “The difference between Epiq and the competition,” Jody says, “is that their trustees have to do a lot more work inhouse. There are a lots of things Epiq takes care of for us that the competitors’ customers have to do themselves.” “Let’s take generating notices and disbursements,” Norma interjects. “We tell the computer that we’re ready to release our audited disbursements for the month. Say nine million can go out to creditors. We don’t generate the checks. Epiq does that from their facility in Portland, Oregon. I never see a check unless it gets returned in the mail due to a bad address.”
Epiq also handles certain filings for the trusteeship. “If there’s a motion to dismiss or an objection to the confirmation of a plan, a lot of trustees have to type those up in-house and either have to mail them out themselves or hire another service to do that.” Jody recalls a conversation with another Trustee from the Eastern District. “He contacted me very excited because he’d found a service that was going to mail out his motions. He thought that was great and asked if I wanted to check it out. I’m like ‘No. Epiq does that for us.” Just as importantly, should they choose to do so, the trusteeship can handle any of the Epiq-provided services in-house. “I have the freedom to say, ‘Okay, I’m going to do this one myself.’ The choice is yours,” Jody says.
Epiq also handles the reconciliation on the trusteeship’s trust account, alerting should anything fail to balance, and provides the documentation to fulfill audit requirements.
“I can honestly say,” Jody concludes, “that the people I’ve worked with at Epiq, they’re good, decent, friendly people. They approach their job with a degree of optimism and happiness that you just don’t see much anymore.”
“With Epiq,” Jody adds, “it’s kind of hands-on working the problem until you, the trustee, are satisfied with the result. That’s what’s you’re going to get from Epiq.”
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