Bankruptcy is a court proceeding in which a judge and court trustee examine the assets and liabilities of individuals and businesses who can’t pay their bills and decide whether to discharge those debts so they are no longer legally required to pay them.
Bankruptcy laws were written to give people whose finances collapsed, a chance to start over. Whether it was bad decision-making or bad luck, lawmakers could see that in a capitalistic economy, consumers and businesses who failed, need a second chance.
And nearly all of them get it!
The American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI) did a study of PACER stats (public court records) from 2016 and found that 95.5% of the 499,909 Chapter 7 bankruptcy cases decided that year were discharged, meaning the individual was no longer legally required to pay the debt.
