§159 Bankruptcy Statistics

Summary

The court clerk (or the bankruptcy court clerk, if certified) must collect standard statistics about people who are individuals with mostly consumer debts and who file for relief under chapters 7, 11, and 13 of the Bankruptcy Code. The Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts must compile those statistics, make them public, and, by July 1, 2008, and every year after, send Congress a report that analyzes the information. The compiled data must be broken down by bankruptcy chapter and shown for the whole country and for each district. It must include totals and categories of assets and debts reported on the required schedules; current monthly income, average income, and average expenses reported by debtors; the amount of debt discharged in cases filed during the reporting period (calculated as the difference between total reported debt and amounts in mostly nondischargeable categories); average time from filing to case closing for closed cases; counts about reaffirmation agreements (how many cases had one, total agreements filed, how many had no attorney, and how many were approved by the court); for chapter 13 cases, counts of final orders valuing secured claims (including those valuing collateral for less than the claim), numbers of dismissals (including dismissals for missed plan payments), refilings after dismissal, plan completions with counts of modifications before completion, and how many debtors had filed another case in the prior 6 years; plus counts of cases where creditors were fined or punitive damages were awarded and counts of cases where sanctions under bankruptcy rule 9011 were imposed on debtors’ attorneys or damages awarded under that rule.