Is it more difficult now than it used to be to file bankruptcy?
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010The passing of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA), which was signed into law by President Bush in 2005, made filing for bankruptcy considerably more difficult than it had been previously. However, since that time the process has been essentially the same. The BAPCPA implemented a whole series of restrictions and preconditions on filing for bankruptcy and the bill’s Congressional sponsors specifically and explicitly stated that its purpose was to make it “more difficult for people to file for bankruptcy.” Largely drafted by the credit card companies themselves, the BAPCPA became a symbol of Congressional – and specifically Republican – corporate cronyism.
Among the many changes that made it more difficult for the debtors to file for bankruptcy, one of most radical – and most detested – changes was the addition of a mandatory credit counseling requirement to the process. In effect, anyone wanting to file for bankruptcy has to receive credit counseling from a government approved credit counseling agency before they can even file their petition. The credit counseling has to happen within 180 days before the filing date and the filer has to receive a certificate from the agency documenting that they received the counseling. Though many of the approved credit counseling agencies are ostensibly non-profit, receiving the counseling and the certificate still usually costs the debtor additional money.
Another of the changes was the adoption of a presumption of abuse concept that was never part of the process previously and assumes that debtors filing for bankruptcy while still earning an amount of money higher than the median average of the state in which he resides may be abusing the system. If the debtor is making this much in regular income, regardless of the debt load, then a means test becomes mandatory. Generally speaking, most people filing for bankruptcy do in fact end up qualifying, the real goal appears to have been to slow and complicate the process, giving creditors more time pressure the debtors before the bankruptcy filing.


