Learning how to declare Bankruptcy If you are declaring personal bankruptcy, then you are going to be limited to either choosing a chapter 7, or a chapter 13 filing. Chapter 7 bankruptcy can provide you with a full discharge from your current debts without the need for any sort of back, or future repayments. Chapter 13 bankruptcy can also provide a discharge of your debts, but only after you have settled on a repayment plan that will describe how you are supposed to continue to make payments on your debts. It is beyond the scope of this article to go into detail about what kind of bankruptcy you should file for, and it is just important to know that the kind of bankruptcy you file for is going to have a significant effect on how long your bankruptcy case will play out.
A chapter 7 filing doesn’t require that you abide by any sort of repayment plan, and is therefore considered to be final once the court has made a ruling on your case. This most often will take anywhere from four to six months after your initial bankruptcy filing with the court, although it can take longer if your creditors raise objections about your filing of chapter 7, or if there are any other issues that involve your case such as complications with evaluating your asset values, o
r difficulty in determining your sources of income. With a chapter 7 filing the process should therefore take anywhere from four to six months in total, although as was previously stated if there are issues with your case for whatever reason it may take longer.
A chapter 13 bankruptcy case can last much longer than a chapter 7 bankruptcy case because with a chapter 13 filing you are going to have to make repayments on your current debts from anywhere between three and five years. It is essential that you fully satisfy the requirements of your repayment plan, because only after you have satisfied such requirements will you be able to get a final discharge on your included debts from the court. The initial steps that are involved with a chapter 13 filing are similar to that of chapter 7 filing, and the primary difference has to do with when the actu
al final decision for a discharge is handed down by the court. With a chapter 7 filing this takes anywhere from four to six months for the majority of cases, and with a chapter 13 filing this same time table can be used, but instead of a final decision for a discharge at the end of the four to six month period, a repayment plan is typically put into effect that will have its own schedule in regard to time.
Just remember that you can plan on the general process to take about six months, and if you file for chapter 13 then you can plan on having to abide by a repayment plan that can last anywhere from three to five years.