How the monitor is built

• Consumer bankruptcy filings are nonbusiness cases: the debtor’s debts are primarily consumer debts. Chapter 7 filings and Chapter 13 filings are the nonbusiness cases in each chapter; business cases are excluded.
• Change on a year earlier compares a 12-month total with the 12 months to the same quarter end a year before. Neighbouring 12-month totals overlap, so the monitor never compares one quarter end with the previous one.
• Latest quarter uses the three-month table and compares it only with the same quarter a year earlier, because filings are seasonal.
• Chapter 13 share is Chapter 13 filings divided by all nonbusiness filings (Chapters 7, 11, and 13) in the same place and period.
• Share of U.S. is a district’s Chapter 13 filings divided by the national total.
• Fastest-growing rankings include only districts with at least 1,000 filings in that chapter, and county growth lists only counties with at least 250 consumer filings, so small places do not lead on percentages alone.
• Districts turning are districts where, in one chapter, the latest quarter’s change and the 12-month change have opposite signs and differ by at least five percentage points.
• Reaffirmation share is the share of closed Chapter 7 cases with at least one reaffirmation agreement filed (BAPCPA 4). A reaffirmation agreement is a Chapter 7 debtor’s agreement to keep paying a debt the discharge would otherwise erase, usually to keep collateral.
• Average liabilities is total scheduled liabilities (BAPCPA 1D, reported in thousands) divided by the cases with complete schedules, not by all cases. The secured share is secured claims divided by total liabilities.
• Median income and expenses are the published medians of Schedule I income and Schedule J expenses (BAPCPA 2A for Chapter 7, 2D for Chapter 13). The median of income less expenses is not published; where the monitor shows income less expenses, it is average income less average expenses from the published totals.
• Completed plan share is completed plans divided by completed plans plus dismissals, for cases closed in the year (BAPCPA 6). Failure to pay is the share of dismissals for failure to make plan payments.
• Collateral valued below the claim is the share of closed Chapter 13 cases with at least one final order valuing collateral below the claim (BAPCPA 5). Prior filing is the share of filers reporting a bankruptcy in the previous eight years (BAPCPA 7).

• Filing counts are rolling 12-month figures unless marked as a quarter.
• The BAPCPA tables are annual and lag the filing tables. In this edition the filings run to June 30, 2026 and the filer figures cover calendar 2025.
• BAPCPA financial figures are what debtors reported on their schedules, and several use only cases with complete schedules.
• Outcome measures (reaffirmations, completed plans, dismissals) describe the cases that closed in a year, whenever they were filed. They are not cohort rates, and they swing with the filing cycle.
• A case without a reaffirmation agreement can still end with the debtor keeping the collateral by other means; the tables count agreements, not what happened to the collateral.
• Secured debt is not split by creditor type. The tables cannot separate mortgage, vehicle, and other secured claims.
• These are aggregate court statistics, not case records, and they say nothing about any single debtor or creditor.
• The courts update their database continually, so a period can change slightly between releases. The monitor records which release each figure came from.

Next step. The Federal Judicial Center publishes a case-level bankruptcy file (the Integrated Database) that would allow true completion rates by filing year and filer profiles before 2018. It is not used in this sample.