let's put it let's put it that way i want to start by giving a few of the core facts in the case and those are this on july nineteenth two thousand and fourteen the trustee issued a trustees final report i'm going to call it the t f r i'm going to refer to it several times as a i'm going to call it a t f r and he mailed that far to the illinois department of health care and financial services i'm going to call them the department from now on that is an entity that handles child support cases in the state of illinois which is where my clients resided they mailed the that t f r to the illinois up to the department but not to is a case where there's actually five five moms who bore children from daniel clark who was the daughter in the case and chastity clark is one of those moms so got a call woke up one day got a call from chesty clark informing her that there was a bankruptcy pending on that day and that there was money to be had because there was assets in the estate mystic pen also got a e mail from mr chester the clark on on that same day august for two thousand and fourteen and a copy of the t f r was attached both mistake pad in this paper at the trial testify that they had no actual knowledge of the case at all until august for a two thousand and fourteen so what happened after that is this page went directly to the department and asked for assistance in the bankruptcy case to try and help help them and after that on august fifteenth the department issued of her filed a proof of claim so there's two main issues in today's case your honor of the first one is agency and the question there is was the department the bankruptcy nosing agent for miss pate a mistake pad on july nineteenth that was the date on which the t f r was issued and i we believe in our position is that the answer is clearly no that there was no agency relationship at that point the second question that we're going to decide it is is if not if there was no agency relationship the seven twenty six a one a is the statute in  question and it provides for a ten day time period to file a proof of claim as a last resort and basically it says that you have to file your proof claim within ten days of the mailing to creditors  the of the t of our so so the question is if there was no agency relationship between the department and miss peyton is that penn does that ten ten day time period run all at the time it was mailed we would argue your honor that clearly constitutionally this is the they are required to mail it to the t f r they're required to mail it to all creditors and that the statute does not run against creditors to whom the t f r was never mailed but don't we have the question of whether your clients were creditors no there's no question there there clearly clark did they say that again your honor by the way i've got a hearing impediment so ok let's confess that and that's fine and thank you for alerting us to that and continue to do that if you can if you can't is completely so under illinois law they didn't have the right to seek payment directly from from clark but instead that payment went to the state isn't there a legitimate question of whether their creditors no your honor i think everybody agrees in this case that they were creditors i mean a creditor is a person who has a claim and they clearly have a claim  any right now there is an issue here as to the agency part of it the district court relied on two things and ruling that there were that there was an agency relationship between the department and miss clark in the state pen and basically those two factors were one there was an illinois statute that makes the department a statutory agency for the purposes of collecting and distributing child support money but it doesn't this place it doesn't displace the ability of the curettage her to actually collect it on their own i mean that but the court clients or creditors your honor i just it's i've briefed that that the the steps that you go through is there is a definition of creditor in the code and it defines a credit or as a person with a claim and then it further defies what a claim is and i think a claim is very expansive very broad any any cause of action or claim whatsoever against the person to which the claim is asserted put makes you a creditor again a bit in this case there's probably we can see that the illinois department of health care was a dispersing  collecting and dispersing agent so again let's go to the issue as to whether the illinois department of health care was an agent we say we say no the district court said yes based on the statute that we were just referring to and also both the bankruptcy court in the district court relied upon the fact that they were an agent because in the past the mom's miss pan had sought to have sought help from from the department to help them collect child support in the past and that somehow that gave them a a  agency relationship with respect to bankruptcy noticing and we would argue your honor that that both of those conclusions do not create an agency relationship at least in a bankruptcy cont mean you can't take in and let's assume for sake of argument that the illinois department of health care was an agent in child support issues that that's a long way for a way from being a bankruptcy notice thing agent for purposes of  any notices from the court and knew nothing about it until august for two thousand and fourteen and the bankruptcy court basically said that when they s earlier when they sought help from the department after they learned about the case in august fourth two thousand and fourteen that that made them an agent we can see that fact that that would have made this paid  agent on august four but the crucial facts in this case that turman who wins occurred on july nineteenth and the issue is not whether they were an agent on august for the issue was whether they were an agent on july nineteenth when the t f r was mailed out because that's when if there is an agency relationship the ten day time period would start to tick away and we would argue your honor or mention in the brief that i want the court to consider on it in connection with this issue is miss schmitt's testimony she is the witness that came down to texas and testified on behalf of  the department and she basically testified that in chapter seven cases and that's what this is a chapter seven case the department never gives notice to custodial parents of pending chapter seven cases and there's a policy of never never acting on behalf of his study or parents in chapter seven cases in this case an exception was made when mistake penn went to the department on august fourth and ask of never giving notice to or filing curse of claim to custodial parents in chapter seven cases that they've got a policy of not being an agent now they made an exception in this case because with miss peyton this think penn went to them on august four and they said yes ok and then they filed the proof a claim it was late if it depending on how you construed the statute but we feel that that that bolsters our argument that there was no and then an agency relationship is typically a consensual relationship a common law to have an agency relationship you have to have a request from a principal and asking for the agent to act on them on their behalf and you've got to have ten sat by the agent to act as that as an agent in this case we're talking about was the department bankruptcy notice an agent not whether they were a an agent with the ability to collect child support and distribute it were they a bankruptcy noticing agent which is a far cry away from being an agent for purposes of collecting child support and i'm going to be a bankruptcy notice the agent that's a person who would who would you would send the notices to  and and then that person would would inform the principal that something happened in the bankruptcy and the code provides for that i don't think the code talks about so i was going to say i ha it doesn't discuss that so we're talking common law of illinois at this point on that issue which is pretty uniform across the country there's no the basics of what an agency relationship requires i think are pretty common  across across the various states so for those reasons we argue that again the question is was mailing the was mailing the t f r to the health care department on july nineteenth the equivalent of mailing it to the to the creditors themselves miss peyton mistake then we would argue that it was not that that question you just ask is is that the rac that you described when you began what issues you said there was a race nova issue here in new hampshire of law that we need to decide was is that it or was it something else no it's  that it's that and the interpretation of seven twenty six a one area which is the statute that basically says that you have to file a crew from of claim on or before the earlier of a the date that is ten days after the mailing of creditors of the summary of the trustees find a record the issue that is fairly fairly novel is the issue of this that the bankruptcy court was of the opinion that mailing the far to the creditor had no impact whatsoever on whether that ten day time period ran or not and they could in the bankruptcy court concluded that that the the meaning of that statute was for it to establish a discrete time as a discrete time period during which that all these time periods get cut off and we disagree with that with the statute clearly any argument that you're making it would extend indefinitely if you've got to be in one of these proceedings well at which they're that correct your honor that's that's correct and the statute provides for that it says i only read the statute says a a that the claim is to be filed on or before the earlier of the date that is cut off because if the trustee typically issues a t r far and gets no response from anybody it's not like everything is out there in limbo not knowing it it's not like that the trustee just com mean they haven't made payments is there any no no in this case the district court although he ruled against me twice he was sympathetic because he granted two states i asked him for a stay  of distribution and he granted that both before the case was set submitted to him and after he issued his opinion in the case so no no distribution has been made in this case it's still open to just again we concede that if we lose on the agency issue that ends the case that ends discussion because there's no need to go on to the second issue in the second issue is  is that p f c filing deadline intended as a discrete point in time and then the judge the bankruptcy court also said it was not founded in due process i confess i don't know what he means by that because all statutes in actually mailed to all creditors making that irrelevant which i think it's but prosperous that's how the bankruptcy court ruled or is it triggered only against creditors to whom the t f r is male and we would say that it's the latter and we argue the court to adopt that theory because for several reasons first of all the plain meaning of the statute seems to comply compel that the t f r must be mailed to all creditors the bankruptcy rule clearly says that it has to be mailed to all creditors and the time and the way the statute reads is that it's it's the claim must be  filed within ten days after the mailing to creditors of the summary of the final report so how can you how can you bind a creditor that has actually no knowledge of the existence of the case and no knowledge of that of the deadline in which they must file a proof of claim how can you bind them to a rule when they don't even have notice it just it just seems absurd your honor not and this is a case where we've got three o creditors claiming my clients are two out of the three and we just feel the results of the rather absurd to give to you know one person one day or so creditor all the funds in this estate and then to not of the two creditors who had actually no formal no notice of the existence of the case and a clear that now there is an issue as  pay this paper by the way as to whether she had knowledge of the case and so we may have a problem with her we don't have a problem with mystic path that's clear and obvious but it is clear that even though miss paid of time on it please go ahead and finish your sentence that you can go ahead and that cannot survive let me just ask one other thing there's another thing your honor that i missed in the brief and that i'd like the court to consider this case because this is authority direct authority on the issue of the we're talking here and it was actually cited by the bankruptcy court in their opinion in the cases u s v cardinal marine supply and nine sixteen fed second one eighty one of eight circuit and it basically says where as here the reason for filing of a priority claim is the failure to give creditor notice it should be treated the same as timely filed priority claims in title to distribution under section seven twenty six so this is the closest authority i can find on this point and it directly supports our argument that if you file a late five claim and you never  because you had no notice and no knowledge of the case which is what happened in this case then they should you should get equal distribution under seven twenty six a with other seven twenty six  several times and miss julie coning is the attorney for mr tao and the answer we got several times both at the appeal stage in the district court in the appeal states here was that the u s trustee basically insisted that myth that the trustees step down and not participate in either of these cases why i can only speculate i can speculate and i'll tell you of my thought on