How to File Chapter 7 Bankruptcy, Step by Step

How to File Chapter 7, Step by Step

Filing Chapter 7 follows eight steps in a fixed order, and four of them carry a deadline counted from your filing date or from the meeting of creditors.

1. Take credit counseling. Under 11 U.S.C. §109(h), you must get a briefing from an approved nonprofit credit counseling agency during the 180 days before you file. The briefing can be done by phone or online.
2. Check the means test. If your current monthly income is above your state's median, the means test decides whether the court presumes your case is an abuse of Chapter 7. You work through it on the 122A forms.
3. Gather your records. You need a list of every creditor and what you owe each one, plus a list of all your property. You also need your income by source, amount and frequency, and your monthly living expenses. If you are married, you gather your spouse's information too, even if only one of you files.
4. File the petition, schedules and fee. You file Official Form 101 and your schedules with the bankruptcy court for your district. The court fees are $338, unless the court lets you pay in installments or waives the fee.
5. The automatic stay begins. The stay starts the moment you file, with no judge's order, and it halts most lawsuits, wage garnishments and collection calls.
6. Attend the 341 meeting. The meeting of creditors is held 21 to 40 days after filing in most Chapter 7 cases, and the trustee questions you under oath.
7. Complete debtor education. After filing, you take a personal financial management course from an approved provider, and the completion certificate is due within 60 days after the first date set for the 341 meeting.
8. Receive the discharge. If no one objects, the court generally issues the discharge order 60 to 90 days after the date first set for the meeting of creditors.

The debtor education certificate is a separate requirement after filing. Under Rule 4004, the court does not grant a Chapter 7 discharge without it, and the clerk closes the case with no discharge. The course provider may file the certificate on your behalf, and if it does not, the filing is your job.

A complaint objecting to your discharge must be filed within 60 days after the first date set for the 341 meeting. On a rough calendar, the meeting falls 21 to 40 days after filing. The discharge then comes 60 to 90 days after the first meeting date, or roughly 81 to 130 days after you file. Excluding dismissed or converted cases, the federal courts report that individual debtors receive a discharge in more than 99 percent of Chapter 7 cases.

Means Test Eligibility and the Eight-Year Repeat Bar

Two rules limit who can get a Chapter 7 discharge: the means test, which applies only if your income is above your state's median, and a time bar on repeat discharges.

Current monthly income is your average monthly income over the six calendar months before you file, not counting Social Security income. Multiply your household's current monthly income, including your spouse's, by 12. If the result is at or below the median family income for your state and household size, 11 U.S.C. §707(b) bars anyone from bringing a means-test motion against you. The U.S. Trustee Program's means-testing page publishes the state median incomes and the expense standards the 122A forms use. The page's median figures apply to cases filed on or after April 1, 2026, and its expense figures to cases filed on or after July 15, 2026.

Above the median, the forms subtract allowed expenses from your current monthly income and multiply what is left by 60. Abuse is presumed if that five-year figure reaches a threshold. The threshold is 25% of your nonpriority unsecured debt, but never less than $10,275 and never more than $17,150. You can rebut the presumption only by showing special circumstances.

Two examples show where the line falls. Say you have $30,000 of nonpriority unsecured debt. A 25% share is $7,500, which is below $10,275, so the threshold is $10,275. Divided by 60 months, $10,275 is $171.25, so abuse is presumed if $171.25 or more a month is left after allowed expenses. With $80,000 of that debt, a 25% share is $20,000. The $20,000 share is above $17,150, so the threshold is $17,150, or about $285.83 a month.

When abuse is presumed and no special circumstances apply, the court may dismiss the case or, with your consent, convert it to Chapter 11 or 13. Chapter 13 lets you keep property and repay debts over time, usually three to five years, and Chapter 7 vs Chapter 13 Bankruptcy compares the two.

The repeat-discharge bar is a separate rule. Under 11 U.S.C. §727(a)(8), you cannot get a Chapter 7 discharge if you received one in a case started within 8 years before your new filing date. After a Chapter 13 discharge, the bar is six years. The six-year bar lifts if that Chapter 13 plan paid at least 100% of allowed unsecured claims. The bar also lifts at 70% of those claims if you proposed the plan in good faith as your best effort.

Documents and Forms You Need to File Chapter 7

A Chapter 7 filing is Official Form 101 plus a set of schedules and statements, and every official form is free on the federal courts' bankruptcy forms page. The current Form 101, Voluntary Petition for Individuals Filing for Bankruptcy, took effect June 22, 2024.

The individual forms that go with it are:

• Schedule A/B (Form 106A/B): your property
• Schedule C (Form 106C): the property you claim as exempt
• Schedules D, E/F, G and H (Forms 106D, 106E/F, 106G and 106H)
• Schedule I (Form 106I): your income, and Schedule J (Form 106J): your expenses
• Form 107: Statement of Financial Affairs
• Form 108: Statement of Intention for Individuals Filing Under Chapter 7
• Form 121: your statement about your Social Security numbers
• Forms 122A-1, 122A-1Supp and 122A-2: the means test
• Form 103A to pay the fee in installments, or Form 103B to ask for a waiver

Rule 1007 groups these into schedules of assets and liabilities, a schedule of current income and expenditures, a statement of financial affairs, and a schedule of executory contracts and unexpired leases. If your debts are mainly consumer debts, you also file your credit counseling certificate, evidence of payment from employers received in the 60 days before filing, and a statement of monthly net income. You also file a record of any interest in a federal or state education or tuition account, and you give the trustee your most recent tax return or a transcript of it.

The court fees total $338: a $245 filing fee, a $78 administrative fee and a $15 trustee surcharge, per the Bankruptcy Court Miscellaneous Fee Schedule. A married couple filing a joint petition pays one set of these fees. The Judicial Conference's inflation adjustments effective December 1, 2026 raise some other fees, such as amending your schedules from $34 to $38. The $338 Chapter 7 total is not among the fees that change.

With Form 103A, you can apply to pay in up to four installments, with the last one due within 120 days of filing. For cause, the court can extend the last payment to no later than 180 days after filing. Your debts are not discharged until the whole fee is paid, and a missed installment can get the case dismissed. Under Rule 1006, you cannot make further payments to an attorney or anyone else helping with the case until the filing fee is paid in full.

Form 103B asks the court to waive the fee entirely. 28 U.S.C. §1930(f) allows that when your income is below 150 percent of the poverty line and you cannot pay in installments. The clerk must accept a Chapter 7 petition filed with a completed and signed Form 103B.

What the Automatic Stay Stops on Filing Day

The automatic stay takes effect the moment you file Chapter 7 and stops most efforts to collect debts that arose before your case began. It arises by operation of law, so no judge has to sign anything. Under 11 U.S.C. §362, it covers starting or continuing lawsuits against you, enforcing earlier judgments, creating or enforcing liens, and any other act to collect a pre-filing claim.

The federal courts say creditors generally may not start or continue lawsuits, wage garnishments, or even phone calls demanding payment while the stay is in effect. For the rules collectors must follow outside bankruptcy, see How to Deal With Debt Collectors.

The stay has exceptions. Criminal cases continue. So do actions to establish paternity or to set or change a support order, along with collection of domestic support from property outside the bankruptcy estate.

Prior cases can shorten the stay or block it. If you had a case pending in the past year that was dismissed, the stay in a new case ends on the 30th day after filing. The court can extend the stay only after finding the new case was filed in good faith. With two or more cases dismissed in the past year, the stay does not take effect at all.

A separate rule in §109(g) can block the filing itself. You cannot be a debtor if you had a case pending in the past 180 days that was dismissed because you willfully failed to follow court orders or to appear. The same bar applies if you asked for and got a voluntary dismissal after a creditor requested relief from the stay.

The 341 Meeting of Creditors and the Trustee

The 341 meeting of creditors is not a court hearing. At the meeting, the case trustee questions you under oath about your filing, usually 21 to 40 days after you file. Rule 2003 requires the U.S. trustee to call it no fewer than 21 and no more than 40 days after the order for relief in a Chapter 7 case. If the meeting place is not regularly staffed by the U.S. trustee or an assistant, the meeting can be held up to 60 days after filing.

The judge is not part of this meeting, because 11 U.S.C. §341 says the court may not preside at or attend it. The trustee puts you under oath, and both the trustee and your creditors may ask questions. If you and your spouse filed a joint petition, you both must attend and answer.

The trustee must also question you on four topics:

• how a discharge affects your credit history
• your ability to file under a different chapter
• the effect of the discharge itself
• the effect of reaffirming a debt

How Long Bankruptcy Stays on Your Credit Report and How to Rebuild Credit After Bankruptcy cover the credit side in detail. Reread your filed schedules before the meeting so your sworn answers match what you filed.

The case trustee is an impartial person the U.S. trustee appoints to run your case and sell any nonexempt assets. When everything you own is exempt or covered by valid liens, the trustee normally files a no-asset report. The federal courts say most individual Chapter 7 cases are no-asset cases. Within 10 days after the meeting, the U.S. trustee reports to the court whether your case should be presumed an abuse under the means test.

Traps to Avoid Before You File Chapter 7

The three main traps before filing Chapter 7 are recent payments to creditors, large luxury charges or cash advances shortly before filing, and moving property to other people.

• Paying a creditor in the 90 days before filing. Under 11 U.S.C. §547, the trustee can set aside a payment on an old debt made in the 90 days before filing. The set-aside requires that you were insolvent and that the payment gave the creditor more than it would get in a Chapter 7 liquidation. For a creditor who is an insider, the window reaches back one year.
• Luxury charges and cash advances. Under 11 U.S.C. §523(a)(2)(C), consumer debts over $900 owed to one creditor for luxury goods or services incurred within 90 days before filing are presumed nondischargeable. Cash advances totaling more than $1,250 on an open-end credit plan within 70 days before filing get the same presumption. Goods or services reasonably necessary to support you or a dependent do not count as luxury.
• Moving property to someone else. Repaying a relative who counts as an insider falls inside the one-year preference window. Before you sell, transfer or give away property ahead of a filing, get advice from a bankruptcy attorney or a legal aid office funded by the Legal Services Corporation.

The $900 and $1,250 figures took effect April 1, 2025, through a Federal Register notice, and they apply only to cases filed on or after that date. Under 11 U.S.C. §104, these amounts adjust every three years for inflation, so the next scheduled change is April 1, 2028.

The filing date also sets your means-test income. Current monthly income averages the six calendar months before you file, so the month you file decides which paychecks the test counts.

Debts Chapter 7 Does Not Erase

A Chapter 7 discharge leaves several categories of debt in place, and 11 U.S.C. §523(a) lists them. The main ones are:

• certain taxes, plus debts taken on to pay taxes that cannot be discharged
• domestic support obligations, plus other divorce or separation debts owed to a spouse, former spouse or child
• student loans, unless repaying them would impose an undue hardship on you and your dependents
• government fines, penalties and forfeitures, and criminal restitution orders
• debts for death or personal injury caused by operating a vehicle, boat or aircraft while intoxicated
• certain debts not listed in your schedules
• certain loans from a retirement plan

Three more categories survive only if the creditor acts:

• debts obtained by false pretenses, a false representation or actual fraud
• debts from fraud or defalcation while acting as a fiduciary, or from embezzlement or larceny
• debts for willful and malicious injury

Under §523(c), these three kinds of debt are discharged unless the creditor files a timely action and the court rules them nondischargeable.

A discharge also does not extinguish a lien on property, so a lender with a lien on your car keeps that lien after the discharge. Chapter 13's discharge is somewhat broader, covering debts for willful and malicious injury to property, debts incurred to pay nondischargeable taxes, and divorce property-settlement debts. If most of what you owe falls into these categories, Bankruptcy Alternatives lays out other routes.

Filing Chapter 7 on Your Own vs with an Attorney

You can legally file Chapter 7 without a lawyer, which the federal courts call filing pro se. Their filing without an attorney page still strongly recommends a qualified attorney's advice, because bankruptcy has long-term financial and legal outcomes and mistakes in the process can affect your rights. Court employees and bankruptcy judges are prohibited by law from giving legal advice.

Pro se filers are expected to follow the Bankruptcy Code, the federal bankruptcy rules and their own court's local rules, and many courts require local forms on top of the official ones. A bankruptcy petition preparer can only enter information into forms. By law, preparers cannot give legal advice, explain answers to legal questions, or help you in court.

Upsolve, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, offers a free filing tool. Its own FAQ limits it to simple individual Chapter 7 cases and excludes joint filings, homeowners, people earning above their state's median income, and people who own or recently owned a formal business entity. Upsolve also says it is not a law firm and not your lawyer.

We could not find a current national government or academic study of Chapter 7 attorney fees. A 2008 Government Accountability Office study estimated the average fee rose from $712 in early 2005 to $1,078 in early 2007. Upsolve's cost explainer estimates Chapter 7 lawyer fees at $1,000 to $3,000.

Approved providers of the two required courses may charge a fee. A course fee of $50 or less is presumed reasonable, and both courses are available free or at a reduced rate based on your ability to pay. Cost to File Bankruptcy breaks down every cost, including the $338 court fees.

If you cannot afford an attorney, the federal courts say you may qualify for free legal services, and the Legal Services Corporation funds 129 nonprofit legal aid organizations across every state. Courts, trustees and local rules vary by district, so a bankruptcy attorney, a legal aid office or a nonprofit credit counselor can apply these steps to your own debts and property. Your average income over the last six calendar months is the current monthly income the means test uses. The budget calculator helps you list the monthly living expenses that Schedule J asks for.

Frequently asked questions