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Does this require that all 12 months are funded, not spent, but funded?
Yes. The money is "sent" into multisig addresses, which means they are prefunded, but I put the word sent in quotes because this happens off chain. The money hasn't actually moved, or at least that move isn't "final" yet -- the sender can overwrite it if the bridge server cosigns to overwrite it. I can automate the bridge server so that it signs whatever the sender wants if a virtual channel is marked as a bill payment, thus allowing the sender to freely overwrite one or more of their prefunded billpay channels if (for example) they have a sudden expense. Then later they can replace the overwritten ones with new ones of the same value when e.g. their next paycheck comes. Effectively borrowing money from "piles" that they previously earmarked for future bills. Which is pretty similar to what people often do in real life.