Fixing the "Fixed" Forms

Two weeks ago, I blogged about the Forms Modernization Project's effort to create new forms specifically for consumer bankrupts. The chair of that Project, Judge Elizabeth Perris, offered a lengthy comment that shared some information on the goals and process. I recommend it to you.  She noted that law students were asked to review the forms.

This fall during my seminar on consumer bankruptcy, I had my students do this as a take-home assignment. We had just read a chapter in Broke by Angie Littwin on pro se bankruptcy filers, and the students' task was to assess whether the forms would make the system easier for debtors. The students' observations ranged from the minute to global. My favorites are below.

The Backdrop for BROKE: Consumer Debt Then and Now

In the introductory chapter of the book, Broke: How Debt Bankrupts the Middle Class,  I present some data about consumer debt levels in the United States. As Bob Lawless and others have shown, levels of consumer debt are strongly correlated with bankruptcy filings. While conditions such as unemployment, rising health care costs, and skyrocketing college tuition--and recessions--all create pressures on consumers that lead to borrow, debt is the sine qua non of bankruptcy--the relief offered by the system is the reduction or elimination of debt--not the promise of a good paying job or a strong social safety net. Because bankruptcy is driven by debt, those filings help reveal whether the levels of consumer debt will create serious problems for the economy and American families.

In Broke, I present a figure, courtesy of the San Francisco Fed, that shows the dramatic growth in household debt in real dollars over the last few decades. Reproduced below, the figure shows that the sharp acceleration began in the mid 1980s. This is an important point to understanding why recovery is proving difficult from the recession. As I explain in the book, "The consumer debt overhang, however, began long before the financial crisis and the recession. Exhortations about subprime mortgages reflect only a relatively minor piece of a much broader recalibration in the balance sheets of middle-class families. . . . The boom in borrowing spans social classes, racial and ethnic groups, sexes and generations." Broke, pp 4-5. The gray bands on Figure show recessions; this recovery is more difficult, at least in part, because we have an unprecedented gap between income and debt. Is this gap disappearing as a consequence of consumer reluctance to borrower and tightened credit conditions?

Consumer Friendly Forms for Bankruptcy

In many respects, bankruptcy is a one-size-fits-all legal process. Yes, there are ample differences in the law (and a world of difference in practice) between the bankruptcy of a large corporation and a typical consumer. But the Bankruptcy Code itself contains plenty of provisions of general applicability. A major example of the one-size-fits-all approach to bankruptcy is the official forms for filing a case. The basic petition and schedules are the same forms for Big Airline Co. and Mr. Joe Blow. The information on the forms is wildly different, with Big Airline Co. listing hundreds or even thousands of creditors, with many more digits in their debts, than Joe Blow. But the form for those debts--Schedule F--is the same form. That may all be changing soon.

The Bankruptcy Rules Committee began a Forms Modernization Project a few years ago, and one of its top agenda items has been creating new forms just for use in consumer bankruptcy cases. Although few people seem to be aware of the effort, a draft version of those new forms is available to the public and to my mind, well worth a look. To see the forms, go here, then click on September 2011, download the file, and look  at pp. 189-315 of the PDF (or tab 7.1 if you use the PDF index.) One thing that is obvious from the page numbers in the prior sentence is that the new forms are really long--way longer than the current forms as completed in the typical consumer case. The added length results in part from the development of extensive instructions for each form. Below is an example of a new form with some commentary on its notable new features.

How to Address Apparent Racial Disparity in the Consumer Bankruptcy System

The article discussed in the N.Y. Times story today is heavily empirical. It is also deliberately light on the prescriptive. Bob Lawless, Dov Cohen and I did make two modest proposals: (1) that a question about race of the debtor should be included on the form for a bankruptcy petition to make it possible to confirm (or disprove) the finding that African Americans file in chapter 13 at a much higher rate than debtors of other races (about double in the data we have), and (2) that all actors in the bankruptcy system—judges, trustees, attorneys and clients—be educated about the apparent racial disparity and the possibility that subtle racial bias may be producing it. The Times certainly helped with the second one!

Beyond that, we leave it to others and to each of us individually to come up with policy responses. In my view, Henry Hildebrand, a longtime chapter 13 trustee in Tennessee, got the big picture exactly right; he is quoted in the Times story as saying we should “use this study as an indication that we should be attempting to fix what has become a complex, expensive, unproductive system.” He will probably reappraise his views if he finds out that I agree with him! Those of us who participate in or study the system know that its complexity is onerous.

Race and Chapter 13

As Adam noted in his kind post, the New York Times today featured our study, "Race, Attorney Influence, and Bankruptcy Chapter Choice." My co-authors are Credit Slips blogger Jean Braucher, a law professor at the University of Arizona, and Dov Cohen, a professor at the University of Illinois who holds a cross appointment in psychology and law. And, we all express many thanks to the NYT reporter, Tara Siegel Bernard, who spent a lot of time slogging through the statistics and legal intricacies in our study.

In a nutshell, the study reports real-world data from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project showing that, among bankrupcy filers, blacks file chapter 13 at higher rates than all other races. The effect is large -- for example, blacks even had a higher chapter 13 rate (54.6%) than homeowners (47.1%). The second part of the study showed that, in a random sample, bankruptcy attorneys were more likely to recommend chapter 13 for a hypothetical couple named "Reggie & Latisha" who went to the African Methodist Episcopal Church as compared to "Todd & Allison" who went to the United Methodist Church. Also, attorneys were more likely to see "Reggie & Latisha" as having good values and being more competent when they expressed a preference for chapter 13.

Foreclosure Timelines and Mortgage Delinquency: More Evidence from Bankruptcy

At the end of a lively session yesterday at Duke Law School featuring Professor Stephen Ware of University of Kansas Law School, there was a brief discussion of whether shorter foreclosure timelines and clearer rules would promote more workouts of delinquent mortgages. The aforementioned paper about bankrupt homeowners suggests that the opposite might actually be the case: among homeowners in bankruptcy, longer foreclosure timelines in their home states were associated with a lower probability of foreclosure initiation while shorter timelines were associated with a higher probability of foreclosure initiation.

What is the Relationship Between Credit Cards and Mortgage Delinquency?

Previously I mentioned this new paper on homeowners in bankruptcy in the American Bankruptcy Law Journal. The central goal of the paper was to investigate what makes homeowners more or less likely to have mortgage troubles as they head into bankruptcy. One of the notable findings is that, across all the models, credit access had a significant effect on keeping mortgages current and avoiding foreclosure initiation (specifics listed pp. 302-304). But why?

BROKE: A New Book on Consumer Debt and Bankruptcy

Just in time for New Year's resolutions on 1) reading more, 2) paring back your own debt, and 3) learning more about consumer bankruptcy to help you do your job (if you are a lawyer, judge, or academic, media, etc), the book, Broke: How Debt Bankrupts the Middle Class was released from Stanford University Press.

The book makes extensive use of the 2007 Consumer Bankruptcy Project data, providing statistics, analysis, and commentary on consumer bankruptcy and debt topics. I edited the volume, and chapter contributors are many Credit Slips regulars or guest bloggers--Jacob Hacker, Bob Lawless, Kevin Leicht, Angela Littwin, Deborah Thorne, and Elizabeth Warren--along with other top scholars.

In the next few weeks, the chapter authors will blog here at Credit Slips about the research featured in the book, but to whet your appetite, I've included a table of contents for the book after the break. The book is accessible to lay readers but its scholarly focus provides plenty of data to educate and surprise even bankruptcy experts. Working on the book, I certainly learned a great deal about timely and important topics such as how pro se debtors (those without attorneys) fare in bankruptcy, where families go after they lose their homes to foreclosure, how bankruptcy affects couple's marriages, and the ways that bankrupt households differ in their financial straits from other households of concern such as those with low assets or late payments on debt. Of course I'm biased but I think the book provides the most comprehensive overview of the consumer bankruptcy system since the enactment of the 2005 bankruptcy amendments.

Bankruptcy Filings Down 11.7% in 2011

The year-end bankruptcy statistics from Epiq Systems have arrived. There were just over 1,379,000 U.S. bankruptcy filings in 2011, a decline of 11.7% from the previous year.

On a monthly basis, December kept with the theme of the past year. The daily bankruptcy filing rate in December 2011 was 4,584, a decline of 12.1% on a year-over-year basis. The past seven months have seen year-over-year declines in the 10-15% rate range. What makes December 2011 different is that December 2010 itself had a year-over-year decline. In words, the declines are building on previous declines.

The question for the moment is whether bankruptcy filings will level off at around their current level or continue to decline. I'm inclined to think we'll see a further decline in 2012, although that assessment is more instinct than analysis. I'll try to post a more formal analysis about projected bankruptcy filings for 2012. Bankruptcy filings may not be a great economic indicator, but their levels are important for the bankruptcy system.

In or Out of Mortgage Trouble? A Study of Bankrupt Homeowners

This is a newly published paper  in the American Bankruptcy Law Journal that I was lucky to work on with Daniel McCue and Eric Belsky at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. Using previously unexamined data in the 2007 Consumer Bankruptcy Project, we study what makes homeowners more or less likely to have mortgage troubles as they head into bankruptcy. Although much can be said about the econometric analysis, for now I wanted to mention quickly that the paper includes descriptive details about bankrupt homeowners (debtor-reported) such as numbers of missed mortgage payments, use of adjustable rate mortgages, mortgage broker use, mobile homes, and refinancing or home equity lines of credit. So please check it out!   

The Decline in Bankruptcy Filings by Chapter

Bankruptcy filings have been on the decline, but has this decline been spread differently between chapter 7 and chapter 13? Using figures from the Bankruptcy Data Project at Harvard as supplied by Epiq Systems, the chart to the right breaks down the decline by chapter. (Clicking on the chart will bring up a larger version in a pop-up box.)

For the past year, both chapter 7 and chapter 13 bankruptcies have been declining. Some commentators have speculated that the slowdown in mortgage foreclosures has been the reason for the declining bankruptcy rate, but if that were true, one probably would see larger declines in chapter 13 rates given that it is the chapter associated with saving a home. In fact, chapter 13s have been declining at a lower rate than chapter 7s. Consumer credit markets play the most important role in determining the swings of the bankruptcy filing rate. If mortgage foreclosures do climb in the first part of 2012, I do not expect to see a huge increase in bankruptcy filings.

One in Five American Families Have Medical Bill Problems

According to this new report. As Mirya Holman and I have explained in the bankruptcy context, measuring medical bill problems and debt is notoriously contested, but the Center for Studying Health System Change does try to make clear its methods and also uses similar metrics over time. The report also contains statistics on the proportion of their sample that considered filing for bankruptcy and actually did file. Definitely worth reading.  

Bankruptcy Filings Drop for 13th Consecutive Month

On a year-over-year basis, the U.S. bankruptcy filing rate dropped for the 13th consecutive month in November. According to statistics from Epiq Systems, Inc., the November daily bankruptcy filing rate was 4,923, a decline of 12.5% from one year ago. November marks the first time that the daily bankruptcy filing rate has dropped below 5,000 since January 2009.

Bankruptcy Filings Continue to Dip Substantially

Epiq Systems has sent their latest bankruptcy filing statistics, and the numbers continue to show a dramatic drop in the bankruptcy filing rate. There were just over 110,000 bankruptcy filings in September which translates to 5,239 bankruptcies per day. Although that rate is about the same as it was in August, it is a 17.9% year-over-year drop from 2010.

Last year, there were 1.56 million bankruptcy filings. This year, we are on a pace to be just above or below 1.40 million bankruptcy filings. Specifically, there will be

• 1,417,000 filings if bankruptcy filings continue for the rest of the year at the same daily rate (5,644 per day) as they have averaged for the first nine months of 2011
• 1,392,000 filings if bankruptcy filings continue for the same daily rate (5,293 per day) as they have averaged for September 2011
• 1,416,000 filings if bankruptcy filings for the remaining three months of 2011 constitute the same proportion of total filings as the average for the last three months of 2009 and 2010 constituted for total filings those years (about 24.3%)

 

Bankruptcy Filings Dropping More Rapidly Than Expected

According to the most recent data from Epiq Systems, there were 120,800 bankruptcy filings in August for a daily bankruptcy filing rate of 5,250. The August daily filing rate represents a year-over-year decline of 14.8% and a decline of 3.5% from July 2011.

These latest figures represent a somewhat deeper drop in bankruptcy filings than I had expected based on my earlier forecast of a 5-10% decline for all of 2011. With the past four months showing year-over-year declines of 10% or higher, it is beginning to look like the annual decline in the bankruptcy filing rate will be above 10%.

One More Time, With Feeling

A Credit Slips reader pointed me to an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution pondering why the bankruptcy rate is falling. The piece is filled with quotes about the relevance of the economy and the cost of filing bankruptcy. Most of it is wrong. For example, it is right that the cost of filing has increased since the 2005 changes to the bankruptcy law, but there is no  evidence the cost has risen in the last year. Thus, the rising cost of filing bankruptcy helps to explain why bankruptcy rates have declined relative to pre-2005 levels but not why they have declined since last year.

Regular readers will know a piece like this just pushes my buttons. Outstanding consumer credit has the strongest statistical link to the short-term ups and downs of the bankruptcy filing rate. The relationship is counter-intuitive and paradoxical. As consumer credit rises, banrkuptcy rates tend to fall in the short term. As people borrow to stave off the day of reckoning, they postpone bankruptcy. When consumer credit tightens, people are less able to borrow to satisify their current needs and, as they run out of options, are more likely to end up in a bankruptcy lawyer's office. When it comes to the economy, the bankruptcy filing rate tells us very little about the overall health of the economy. The strongest reason why bankruptcy filing rates have eased slightly is that consumer credit has become slightly more available, according to the Federal Reserve's latest release.

Omnibus Update on (Declining) Bankruptcy Filing Rates

The June bankruptcy filing figures came out while I was away, and the July figures came out a little late. Thus, I have missed the past two monthly posts on the bankruptcy filing rate. Consider this an omnibus update on the pace of bankruptcy filings. As always, the data come courtesy of Epiq Systems.

The big picture is that U.S. bankruptcy filing rates continue to fall, both on a monthly and year-over-year basis. The daily bankruptcy filing rate was 5,484 in June and 5,505 in July. These figures represented year-over-year declines of 10.0% and 14.2% respectively. As compared to one year ago, bankruptcies over the first seven months of 2011 have fallen by 9%. The trend now suggests total annual filings for 2011 will be between 1.40 and 1.45 million, a decline of 7-10% from 2010 when 1.56 million bankruptcies were filed.

Bankruptcy Filings Dip Substantially in May

Bankruptcy filings in May dropped 12.5% on a year-over-year basis. There were almost 123,000 filings in May, which spread over the month's 21 business days, amounted to a daily filing rate of 5,845. That number also represents a 5.4% drop from April 2011. As always, these numbers come courtesy of Epiq Systems.

The drop in May represents the seventh straight month of year-over-year declines in the bankruptcy filing rate. It is the largest year-over-year decline since the trough of bankruptcy filings ended after passage of the 2005 bankruptcy reforms. There appears now to be almost no question that bankruptcy filings in 2011 will be down. Although the May drop is larger than expected, I still believe in my projection of a 5-10% decline for the year.

Lest anyone think the bankruptcy decline means times are great, keep in mind that the absolute number of bankruptcy filings will be between 1,450,000 and 1,500,000, representing over 2,000,000 people (because about 30% of bankruptcy cases are filed jointly by a husband and wife). There is still plenty of misery to go around.

For those who are looking for reasons for the decline in bankruptcy filings, it is because of the increased availability of consumer credit. This trend was apparent by the end of last year and, if anything, has increased in pace. Rather than belabor the point, I will refer readers to a previous post on the relationship between consumer credit and bankruptcy filing rates.

A New Study on Medically Related Bankruptcies

Thanks to our friends over at WSJ's Bankruptcy Beat, a new study caught my eye on the issue of medical bankruptcies. A new study appearing in the Journal of Clinical Oncology documents an increased risk of bankruptcy with certain types of cancers. The full abstract is available.

The study is principally directed at understanding what contributes to bankruptcy risk as between different types of cancers. But, if we can use cancer as an indicator of serious medical problems, the numbers can be used to draw some comparisons between medical problems and general bankruptcy risk. The conclusions provide some support for both sides of the debate about whether medical problems lead to an increased risk of bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy Filings Down in April

The postings have been a little light here the last few days as we all have been taking care of the onslaught of work (mainly grading) that accompanies the end of the semester. If you are curious about the rhythms of the academic world, I have often thought that you could learn a lot just by following the posting frequency here.

One of the things that fell off my desk was my monthly update on bankruptcy filing statistics. We are almost all the way through May, but on the theory that better is late than never, here are the numbers for April. As always, thanks to Epiq Systems for the data.

A Deeper Dive into Racial Disparities in Chapter Choice and Women in Bankruptcy

Thanks again to Bob Lawless for his excellent post this morning highlighting the findings from our latest report, “Bridging the Gap II: Examining Trends and Patterns of Personal Bankruptcy in Cook County's Communities of Color." The report found evidence of racial disparities in chapter choice in Cook County, IL, as well as a disproportionately high concentration of filings among women living in communities of color. If you don’t have time to read the whole thing, check out our press release and policy brief.

If this report raised any burning questions, feel free to ask them on a conference call we will be hosting on Thursday at 11am CT (follow the link to register and get the call-in information).  If you’re shy, you can also send questions via Facebook or Twitter, and I’ll answer them on the call. I will be joined by Megan Cottrell of the Chicago Reporter.  The Reporter is an investigative magazine that published a companion piece to our report asking why these racial disparities in chapter choice might exist. I will also be joined by Woodstock Institute’s Policy and Communications Associate Katie Buitrago who will close out the call by telling the story of one bankruptcy filer, Roxie King, a grandmother of 20 from an African-American neighborhood in Chicago who went through Chapter 13 bankruptcy after being laid off from her job as an echocardiogram technician. Roxie tells her story in the video below:

The Stark Facts of Race and Bankruptcy

The Woodstock Institute in Chicago has a fantastic new report entitled, "Bridging the Gap II: Examining Trends and Patterns of Personal Bankruptcy in Cook County's Communities of Color." The results are ugly for anyone who believes in equal access to economic opportunities and justice.It should be required reading for anyone working with bankruptcy and credit. The basic findings from Cook County:

• Personal bankruptcies are concentrated in African-American communities
• African-Americans are much more likely to file chapter 13
• Women make up a larger share of individual bankruptcy filers, and a dramatically larger share in African-American communities, than men do

The only statistic that contradicts the story of a racially sorted bankruptcy system is that from 2008 to 2010 the bankruptcy filing rate increased everywhere but increased the most in white and Latino communities. The African-American fiing rate was already so much higher, however, that it is not surprising that it showed less of an increase than the increase for other racial groups.

Bankruptcy Filings Continue Decline on Year-over-Year Basis

It's monthly bankruptcy filing data time. Long-time readers will suspect I am about to hit my usual theme: the raw numbers are usually deceiving. Although March saw a lot of bankruptcy filings, both the number of extra days in March and seasonality in the data make the March figures almost good news. In fact, on a year-over-year basis, the filing rate continues to decline. As always, thank you to the folks at Epiq Systems for providing the data reported and analyzed here.

One Consumer Bankruptcy System, or Many?

As Principal Investigator of the Consumer Bankruptcy Fee Study, I've been gathering "qualitative data" from attorneys, trustees and judges about how the consumer bankruptcy system is working. I have conducted over a dozen focus groups, many, many one-on-one interviews, and have been privy to myriad list-serve threads discussing the costs of BAPCPA generally and more specifically, consumer bankruptcy attorney fees.

Here is one preliminary observation: there is a huge disparity with respect to how and how much attorneys are paid, depending upon where in the country they practice. This is not a shocking revelation on its face, given the disparities in the cost of living from city to city. The data reveal, however, variations that go beyond big city=expensive, small town=cheap.

The Consumer Bankruptcy Fee Study

Thanks to Katie and my friends at Credit Slips for the guest blogging gig.  I appreciate the invitation and the opportunity.

In my next couple of posts, I am going to report on the Consumer Bankruptcy Fee Study (see Katie's post below).  Today, I'm making a pitch to the consumer debtor's attorneys who have received (or will receive) an invitation to participate in a survey about their consumer bankruptcy practices.  To date, the Consumer Debtor Attorney Fee Survey has been distributed to ~400 lawyers who represent consumer debtors.  I expect to send out a couple of additional "waves" in the next weeks.  As I said in my cover note,

Bankruptcy Filings Climb in February, But Looks Can Be Deceiving

There were a total of 109,178 bankruptcy filings in the month of February for a rate of 5,750 new cases per day. The February figure represents a 12.6% increase from January March. Although bankruptcy filings seem to be up sharply in February, looks are deceiving. In reality, the 12.6% increase in February supports the idea that, on an annual basis, bankruptcy filings actually will decline in 2011. As always, the data for this analysis is courtesy of Epiq Systems.

Big-Bankruptcy Empirical Research Post-Op (3): Jack-knife Fights and Pencils in Zimbabwe

If you have followed me this far--and it's understandable if you haven't--you might be curious to know what ultimately came of LoPucki's Big-Bankruptcy Empirical Research Conference, which I "live-blogged" (is that a verb?) yesterday.

The short answer:  It's all about jack-knifing and pencils in Zimbabwe.

Huh?

Background:  Nothing gets academics’ dander up like debates about methodology.  For legal academics, this often breaks into two related clashes.  (1) Whether to be an “empiricist” or not; and (2) if so, how to do it.  

The folks at LoPucki’s conference mostly drink the empiricism Kool Aid, so answer the first question “yes.”  After all, they included some of the nation’s leading business bankruptcy empiricists, among others Ken Ayotte (Northwestern), Joe Doherty (UCLA), Ted Eisenberg (Cornell), Bob Lawless (Illinois), Adam Levitin (Georgetown), Steve Lubben (Seton Hall), Ed Morrison (Columbia), Bill Whitford (Wisconsin), Sarah Woo (NYU) and, of course, LoPucki himself.

Rather, the real knife fight was over how to do this work.  Must it only be quantitative (and guided by a scientifically legitimate—falsifiable—hypothesis)? Or could (should) it also include (arguably less rigorous) qualitative methods?  Does it have to be social science?  Or is “good enough for law” good enough?

This may sound like mere wonkage.  But it matters for two reasons.  

Live-Blogging the Big-Bankruptcy Empirical Research Agenda (2): Defining Terms

Still at UCLA.

Regardless of how you define chapter 11 success, selecting the information that should compose a chapter 11 database to help you figure out what works (and what doesn't) is often a much trickier problem than you might think.  Consider, for example, the simplest question:  what is a “turnaround manager?” 

It’s a question you might want to be able to answer, because you might think that they do (or do not) make success (however defined) more likely.   The services of the  ZolfoCoopers and Alvarez and Marsals of the world  don't come cheap.  If they aren't improving outcomes, maybe they aren't worth the price.

Yet, we know that the ZolfoCoopers and Marsals are not the only turnaround managers. For example, LoPucki observed that many companies in trouble may simply let senior management go, and “promote some subordinate lackey who is declared to be a turnaround expert.”  Is that person a "turnaround manager"?

Live-Blogging the Big-Bankruptcy Empirical Research Agenda: Nothing Succeeds Like Success

UCLA Law Professor Lynn LoPucki has graciously agreed to permit me to live-blog the Big-Bankruptcy Empirical Research Agenda conference he has organized today at UCLA.

For those few who don't know, the Bankruptcy Research Database is one of the most important tools available to scholars and practitioners interested in understanding patterns in  chapter 11 cases.  It captures a great deal of information about essentially every large public company that has commenced a chapter 11 case under the current Bankruptcy Code.

The holy grail of all bankruptcy scholarship is figuring out whether a case was successful.  Conventional wisdom might say that confirming a chapter 11 plan—and paying the professionals in full—is good enough. 

But, we know that many companies file again, despite having confirmed a plan, and that may not necessarily be evidence that the plan was a failure:  circumstances change, etc.  Conversely, the confirmed plan may, in hindsight, prove much worse than other possible deals: Perhaps a 363 sale would have produced greater recoveries for creditors.  

Bankruptcy Filings Hit 2-Year Low in January

In January, households and businesses filed bankruptcies at the rate of 5,090 per day. The last time the daily bankruptcy filing rate was this low was January 2009. Monthly bankruptcy filings are sensitive to the number of business days in a month, making the daily filing rate a more meaningful figure than the absolute level of filings.

The January 2011 daily filing rate represented a 2.2% decline from December and a 5.9% decline on a year-over-year basis from January 2010. The January dip should not be overstated. The months of December and January historically are low filing months. Nevertheless, the January decline is keeping with the longer term trend of a declining bankruptcy filing rate and a long-term forecast that total bankruptcy filings will decline slightly in 2011.

And, before anyone runs around claiming that a declining bankruptcy rate is a sign of the economic recovery to come, be sure to read this post explaining why that is not necessarily so. As always, thanks for Epiq Systems for the data behind this post.

Debt Causes Bankruptcy (But Sometimes in Counter-Intuitive Ways)

I like NPR's Marketplace, but stories like this drive me nuts: "Why bankruptcy claims aren't as high as one would think." The story repeats a premise I often hear in media calls that I receive. The conversation usually starts something like this: "Foreclosures are up, unemployment is high, the economy is a wreck: why have bankruptcies stopped climbing?"

Wrong question. But fair enough. I get called because I am supposed to know something about bankruptcy filing rates, and my caller often has just picked up the assignment for the day. If that is the wrong question, what should we be taking away from trends in bankruptcy filing rates?

Bankruptcy Filings Continue to Slide in December But Show 8% Increase on Annual Basis

The daily bankruptcy filing rate dropped 7.3% in December, coming on the heels of a 13.3% drop in November. Overall, there were about 114,700 filings in December according to data provided by Epiq Systems. On a year-over-year basis, December 2010 was a 2.1% decline from December 2009.

Projected Filings for 2011

There will be 1,457,787.3 bankruptcy filings in 2011. Well, at least that is what the numbers say, although I'm not sure what will happen in that last .3 of a case.

That projection is based on a fairly simple model that uses monthly data from 2006 - 2010 on bankruptcy filings (again thanks to Epiq Systems for providing those data) as well as government data on revolving consumer credit (e.g,, credit card debt), nonrevolving consumer credit (e.g., car loans), and the unemployment rate. The model also accounts for cyclical monthly effects--bankruptcy fiings often spike in February and March and decline in November and December--as well as fixed effects from the The graph to the right shows the model's results. The solid black line shows the actual bankruptcy filings for 2010 through November. The dotted red line shows what the model would have predicted for 2010 while the solid red line shows the model's projections for 2011.

Bankruptcy Filing Rate Drops Sharply in November

The bankruptcy filing rate fell sharply in November, declining 13.4% to a daily rate of slightly over 5,600 per day. On a year-over-year basis, November filings were down 2.7% from November 2009. The total number of filings in November -- 118,000 -- was spread over more business days making the daily filing rate decline greater than the decline in the total number of monthly filings reported elsewhere. Because the number of monthly bankruptcy filings is sensitive to the number of business days in a month, the daily filing rate is a more meaningful figure.

Google, Bankruptcy & Bieber

One of the many wonderful things about university teaching is that you get to hang around lots of smart people who tell you lots of interesting things. One of my students, David Henken, pointed out to me a very interesting pattern that comes from Google Insights for Search. People use Google to search for the word "bankruptcy" much more often during the week than the weekend. Does this pattern tell us something about how people think about bankruptcy? Perhaps.

Compared to the weekly pattern for other search terms, "bankruptcy" seems to have its own rhythm. This includes a search I did for "Justin Bieber," perhaps the most useful Bieber-related search that has ever occurred. And, yes, my invocation of Justin Bieber is largely motivated by a shameless attempt to increase blog readership among girls aged 10-14, especially those living at Casa Lawless.

Bankruptcy Filings Follow Their Usual Summer Sideways Move

The bankruptcy filing statistics for September have displayed their usual sideways move during the summer. Since May, each month's filing rates have moved up or down. Overall, however, bankruptcy filing rates, while somewhat lower, are approximately where they were at the beginning of the summer.

September's total daily bankruptcy filing rate was 6,380, a monthly increase of 3.5% that comes after a monthly decline of 3.9% in August. For comparison, bankruptcy filings spiked higher than usual in March 2010, making April a better reference. In April, the daily bankruptcy filing rate was 6,650. For the past twelve months, the average daily filing rate has been 6,220.

The Shadow Consumer Bankruptcy System

    Bankruptcy filings have not risen at anything like the rate at which consumer debt defaults have risen since 2007.  Part of the explanation may lie in the shadow bankruptcy system, a network of alternative service providers who purport to save debt-burdened consumers from the bankruptcy court.  While consumers being sued on delinquent credit cards and mortgages receive solicitations in the mail from bankruptcy attorneys, they are also deluged with a variety of other offers of aid.  These range from foreclosure rescue scams to a wide range of legitimate and dubious debt advice and counseling services, to debt elimination and debt settlement schemes.  While pondering this post I searched in the usual places for any good empirical data on the number of consumers participating in non-profit counseling, or the number of customers enticed by those who promise to make debt disappear, with no success.   We don't seem to know how many debtors go to these debt advice services.

A Lot of Wisdom over at the NYT

Tara Siegel Bernard has a post up over at the New York Times Bucks blog about economic indicators, outstanding credit, and bankruptcy filings. She quoted some guy named "Lawless" who really sounds like he knows what he is talking about--probably a good-looking guy too. Punch line -- less credit means fewer bankruptcies all other things being equal (which they rarely are).

Debt Distress: Symptoms and Treatment

From the United Kingdom comes an interesting new study, based on a survey of more than 10,000 applicants for legal aid about their problems and the means they use to address them. The study explores the linkages between overindebtedness and social exclusion.  Consumers seeking help with debt problems are much more likely to face multiple related difficulties, including employment, mental health and other civil justice problems.  This longitudinal study also reports on the duration of debt problems and the success or failure of different strategies consumers employed.  The findings support the need for a broad array of services to assist consumers overwhelmed by debt, an approach characteristic of many European consumer bankruptcy and debt adjustment systems, about which Jason Kilborn and others have written.  These coordinated social service approaches are notably absent from the US bankruptcy system, at least officially, and apart from some token counseling requirements.  

One of Every Nine Bankruptcy Cases Is Filed Without a Lawyer

A few weeks ago, I pulled a national random sample of chapter 7 and chapter 13 cases filed by individuals during July and August of 2010. I kept track of how many were filed by pro se debtors, that is people who were not represented by an attorney as indicated by the docket sheet. The figure was 11.3% or a little more than one out of every nine cases (n = 672). Interestingly, the pro se rate was higher in chapter 13 (13.8%) than it was in chapter 7 (10.1%), but the difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.167).

The fact that one of every nine debtors files bankruptcy without an attorney will probably strike some people as high, but keep in mind this is just a national average. From talking with court clerks and bankruptcy judges, I understand some jurisdictions may have a pro se rate as high as 30%. Pro se debtors can impose extra costs on the bankruptcy system as they try to navigate the maze of forms and proceedings. Also, with a very complex law like the Bankruptcy Code that was only made more complex in 2005, it is likely that unrepresented debtors are not achieving as good results in bankruptcy as those who are able to afford attorneys.

Bankruptcy and the Crisis: Why so Few?

Many thanks to Bob for the invitation to guest blog here.  Those who follow Bob's postings on bankruptcy filing numbers will have seen that U.S. consumer bankruptcy filings have been plodding upwards steadily, but only to roughly where they were before the BAPCPA bubble back in 2005.  One of the inscrutable mysteries of the financial crisis of 2007-??, which is after all a housing and consumer debt crisis, has been how few bankruptcies have been filed.  Somehow, historically unprecedented levels of consumer debt and loan defaults have not produced the surge in bankruptcy filings one would expect.

July Bankruptcy Filings Rise, But Look at the Big Picture

The folks at Automated Access to Court Electronic Records (AACER) sent over the July bankruptcy figures. Total U.S. bankruptcy filings in July (134,600) were about the same as they were in June (133,900). There was extra business day in July, however, meaning that the daily filing rate, rose 5.3% to 6,408. The year-over-year increase in the daily filing rate was 7.7%.

Regular readers know that I am skeptical of reading very much into the ups and downs of the monthly filing rate. If you had looked at the June fiing rate, you would have seen an 8.9% drop in daily bankruptcy filings and perhaps concluded the economy was beginning to turn around. The July increase might lead you to the opposite conclusion. The most informative analysis comes from taking a longer term look at the data. And, there is my usual caveat that bankruptcy filings are, at best, a weak and trailing indicator of overall economic strength.

Visualizing Financial Distress

The Admistrative Office of the US Courts (AO) has released updated data on bankruptcy filings. While the AO data as some problems, as Bob Lawless has pointed out, I am pleased that they seem to have improved the accessibility of the data. For example, there is now an interactive map by state that is sort of fun (well, fun in my world).

One nice thing is the statistics on net scheduled debt. Given the way that some people seize on the dollars of debt in bankruptcy as a marker of the system, I like how the AO has deducted nondischargeable debt from the total debt listed by the debtor. To do otherwise, gives a misleading picture of how much "help" people get from bankruptcy. But additional caution is still needed. For the chapter 13 filers, about 2 in 3 of these people will not get a discharge of any unsecured debts because they will not complete the repayment plan. Much more importantly, these figures are total debt, the bulk of which will be mortgage and auto debt, which debtors must pay if they want to keep their homes and cars.

All in all, a better use of your time might be the interactive maps at the NY Fed. These have been upgraded recently to show delinquencies on auto loans, bank cards, mortgages, and even student loans. Check them out here.

Hat tip to former Credit Slips guest blogger, John Rao, for bringing the AO data to my attention.

June Sees Big Drop in Bankruptcy Filing Rate

The U.S. daily bankruptcy filing rate dropped in June by 8.9%, the second-largest monthly drop since 2006. Although bankrupt debtors filed approximately the same number of cases in June as May (about 133,000 - 134,000), there were two more business days in June meaning the daily filing rate actually declined. On a year-over-year basis, June 2010 was a 6.6% increase from June 2009, but this is the lowest year-over-year increase since the wave of cases from the 2005 changes to the bankruptcy law worked their way through the system.

These latest data provide the strongest evidence yet that the U.S. bankruptcy filing rate may be leveling off after nearly five straight years of steady increases. As always, many thanks to Automated Access to Court Electronic Records (AACER) for providing the latest statistics.

U.S. Bankruptcy Filings at Same Level as Before 2005 Law

According to Automated Access to Court Electronic Records (AACER), the U.S. daily bankruptcy filing rate for May was 6,672, which was virtually identical to the rate from April. On a year-over-year basis, the May filing rate increase was only 10.5%. As regular Credit Slips readers know, the year-over-year increase has been declining for some time. A year-over-year increase of 10.5% is small compared to recent history. For example, in May 2009 there was a 41.4% year-over-year increase in the daily bankruptcy filing rate.

For the past five years, the story of the bankruptcy filing rate has been a steady increase, but that story might be changing. Even after adjusting for changes in population (see the graph to the right). U.S. Bankruptcy filings are at the level they were before the 2005 changes to the bankruptcy law, suggesting they might be nearing their "natural" rate. Of course, there is no true "natural" rate of bankruptcy filings, but what I mean by that is that the bankruptcy filing rate may be nearing its limit given the amount of consumer debt that exists. Unless there more consumer debt is injected into the system, bankruptcy filings will have to stop rising. And, consumer debt actually has been steady to falling. None of this is to be sanguine about the number of bankruptcy filings, we are on target to get around 1.65 million bankruptcy filings in 2010.

U.S. Trustee Audits on Debtor Bankruptcy Filings

In March, the Executive Office of the U.S. Trustee (EOUST) released its annual report on audits of individual chapter 7 and chapter 13 cases. The audits identified a "material misstatement" in 22% of the cases examined for fiscal year (FY) 2009. The 2005 changes to the bankruptcy law require these audits and the EOUST annual report. The "material misstatement" rate for FY 2009 is similar to previous reports--21% in FY 2008 and 30% in FY 2007. The rate of "material misstatements" suggested both a public policy issue and a research methodology issue.

The Uneven Rise and Fall of Bankruptcy Filings

Using data from Automated Access to Court Electronic Records (AACER), I recently posted about the 4.2% drop in total bankruptcy filings for the month of April, which came on the heels of a 35% increase in the month of March. These are national figures and mask considerable variations across the country. To look at variation across the country, I compared the total daily bankruptcy filing rate for the first four months of 2010 to the daily filing rate for all of 2009. Also, I used the federal judicial districts as the unit of measurement. Although federal judicial districts are not an ideal geographic breakdown, they do allow for a little bit more nuanced picture than using state-level data and avoid what can be an overwhelming morass of county-level data (which are not readily available anyway)

There are some areas of the country that are experiencing declining or flat bankruptcy filing rates. Of the 91 federal judicial districts (not counting Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands), 22 have experienced a decline or no increase in the bankruptcy filing rate. As the map to the right shows (click on it for a bigger image), the areas with declines (blue) are mainly in the southeast. Nevada stands out as an exception, although that district experienced such huge increases last year, its decline for the first four months may just be a regression to the mean.

The rate of increase across the entire nation was 10%. There are 29 judicial districts that saw a rate of increase greater than 10%. Those judicial districts fall principally in three areas: the plains and west coast, the upper Midwest, and the northeast. Thus, the national statistics do mask a great deal of regional variation. I'll stop there -- my flight is about to get called.

Bankruptcy Filings Drop in April

The daily bankruptcy filing rate in April was 6,631, which was a 4.2% decline from March. The April filing rate was 13.2% higher on a year-over-year basis, but that is the lowest year-over-year increase since the trough after the 2005 changes to the bankruptcy law. As always, a thank you goes to Automated Access to Court Electronic Records (AACER) for supplying the data.

Before we get carried away with what looks like really good news, it is important to keep a few points in perspective. First, April has tended to see declines in the bankruptcy filing rate (see the table to the right). It's all part of the annual cycle of bankruptcy filings. Because February and (especially) March tend to have inflated filing rates as people use their tax refunds to pay for bankruptcy court costs and attorneys fees, April tends to see a decline as the filing rate moves back toward its mean. Second, the monthly bankruptcy filing rates do what a lot of data series do--that is, they move up and down. It's probably not profitable to draw conclusions from one month's worth of bankruptcy data. Indeed, it has only been a few years since information technology made reporting of monthly bankruptcy filing figures easy to do. Before then, we generally only looked at quarterly data. Third, as I'll explore later, there is a great deal of regional variation. Some parts of the country, especially in the west, are still seeing increasing filing rates.

The Congressional Research Service Says No Real Effect from BAPCPA

According to a story in this morning's BNA Bankruptcy Law Reporter, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) released a study stating the 2005 amendments to the bankruptcy law (the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act or BAPCPA) will not permanently reduce the U.S. bankruptcy filing rate. Those findings fit with what we have been seeing the past few months. Even on a per capita basis, the March 2010 bankruptcy filing rate matched the rate from before the 2005 amendments.

CRS reports are not publicly released as a matter of course, and the Bankruptcy Law Reporter is a subscription service. Hence, I can't link you anywhere for this information. If someone does have a copy of the CRS report, I will be happy to make it available here through Credit Slips and/or pass it along to Open CRS.

March Bankruptcy Filings Are Up But Not "Spiking"

Media outlets are reporting that bankruptcy filings climbed sharply in March (see, for example, Duff Wilson's report in the New York Times or the Reuters wire story). Those reports are not wrong, but they don't tell the whole story. As always, many thanks to the ever efficient Automated Access to Court Electronic Records (AACER) for providing the data.

It is true that there were over 158,000 bankruptcy filings in March 2010, and it is also true that this figure represents a 35% increase over February. Long-time Credit Slips readers know the golden rule for monthly bankruptcy filing data: Thou Shall Adjust for the Number of Business Days in the Month. The total monthly bankruptcy filing figures are very sensitive to the number of business days in a month. In fact, since 2007, the number of business days alone explains about 30% of the variance in the month-to-month differences.

There were 23 business days in March as compared to only 19 in February. Once one adjusts for the number of business days, the March filing figures show a much less dramatic increase and an increase that is very much in keeping with both historical cycles and recent trends. March had a daily bankruptcy filing rate just under 6,890, which is a 11.6% increase from the February daily bankruptcy filing rate of 6,170. To put some perspective on the 11.6% increase, consider that February was a 14.2% increase over January. These increases are consistent with the historical cycle of filing rate increases early in the year. If the cycle holds again this year--and there is no reason it shouldn't--the rest of the year should have a relatively constant filing rate until late fall.