Last year overall consumer bankruptcy filing topped 1,064,927, according to the National Bankruptcy Research Center. This number is up 33 percent from 2007, when 801,840 people filed.
Numbers are expected to continue to climb this year as the recession weighs on consumer’s wallets and more people turn to filing bankruptcy.
“Consumers are under great financial stress, with no immediate end in sight,” said Samuel Gerdano, American Bankruptcy Institute’s executive director, in a news release. “We expect the upward spike in personal bankruptcies to continue in 2009.”
Mass layoffs and business bankruptcies haven’t helped the matter. With hundreds of thousands of people losing their income every month, Chapter 7 bankruptcy has become an appealing option for many.
And, as people struggle to keep up with daily living expenses and mounting debt, some have turned to filing Chapter 13 bankruptcy to stop foreclosure/repossession proceedings and to get set on a debt-repayment plan.
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Tags: chapter 13 bankruptcy, chapter 7 bankruptcy, consumer bankruptcies
This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 10:21 am and is filed under Bankruptcy and the Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
My uncle agreed to sell a mobile home to a man several years ago. He asked only that the man pay the delinquent taxes. The man paid only a small amount of taxes. After several months my uncle got a judgment against him, but did not want to evict him during the holidays. The man, however, filed bankruptcy during the holidays. What are the options for my uncle? Is a mobile home considered a homestead?