In October 2005, Congress pushed through new bankruptcy law in an attempt to weed out people who abused bankruptcy laws by running up massive credit card debt with no intention of paying it off. But it seems only a small percentage of those who file for...

A weak job market, housing woes and other financial stresses took a toll last month, as 999 Valley residents and firms filed for bankruptcy - a 77 percent jump from 563 in May 2007. Still, the latest figures showed modest improvement from April, when...

Tennessee continues to lead the nation in the share of people going broke, and experts fear the slowing economy will push the number of bankrupt Tennesseans even higher over the next year. The rate of personal bankruptcy filings in the Volunteer State...

In December, Alfonso Sosa, a house painter in Fredericksburg, Texas, fell behind on the payments for the mobile home he shared with his wife Melba. The mortgage holder moved to foreclose, and Sosa filed an emergency petition in federal court for...

The mortgage crisis is a massive problem for the economy and for middle America. The mortgage crisis has now expanded into a heightened state of alert for car loans and student loans. Given that Wall Street is taking hundreds of billions in write-downs,...

South Florida bankruptcy filings soared by 77 percent in May compared with a year ago. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida recorded 1,731 bankruptcies last month, up from 978 in May 2007. Broward County's Chapter 7 filings more...

Bankruptcy filings leapt up 30 percent for the 12 months ending March 31 -- from 676,000 in 2007 to nearly 902,000 this year -- according to data from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Despite the sharp rise, the filings are below the high...

Bankruptcy filings in Colorado and the U.S. are surging this year as more households collapse under the weight of mortgages they can't afford. Businesses and consumers filed 4,264 bankruptcy cases in Colorado in the first quarter, a 35 percent increase...

Personal bankruptcies in the United States are rising, despite tighter restrictions passed in 2005, court documents show. Personal bankruptcy filings peaked at 2.04 million just before Congress raised income limits and made it more expensive to file, The...

Bankruptcy is supposed to get rid of bad pennies. Prince Ella Green thought so. She and her husband, James, who live in League City, fell on hard times and filed bankruptcy in 1995. The case was a Chapter 13, meaning the Greens submitted a plan for...

Bankruptcy filings continue to increase as Northeast Florida residents and businesses' budgets get pinched by the mortgage meltdown and rising fuel and food costs. The increase in filings also comes as more residents become comfortable with 2005...

The numbers are stark: In the first three months of last year, bankruptcy filings in federal court in Rhode Island totaled 576. This year, they climbed to 910. That’s an increase of almost 60 percent. It’s also a strong indicator that Rhode...

he number of Phoenix-area bankruptcy filings more than doubled in April as the soft economy and lingering housing ills came home to roost. In the Phoenix area, 1,104 consumers and businesses filed for protection from creditors last month, up from 548 in...

A unique partnership between the federal government and the New York City Bar Association is the latest of several initiatives by which attorneys are volunteering to help individuals caught in the kind of financial distress registered by record numbers...

The saddest hour of Mary Smith's day started at 4 p.m. inside a hearing room at U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Sacramento. In just minutes, she would publicly reveal to everyone assembled how deeply mired she is in money problems. Smith, a substance abuse...

A bankruptcy judge has rejected Countrywide Financial Corp.'s proposal to settle accusations that it fabricated evidence used in a bid to foreclose on a home. Judge Thomas Agresti of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Pittsburgh on Tuesday dismissed the...

Mortgage lenders are abusing the bankruptcy court system by pursuing unjustified foreclosures against struggling homeowners, piling on questionable fees and misstating the amounts owed, witnesses alleged at a congressional hearing on Tuesday. The result...

Mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp., which is under investigation for inflating certain borrowers' fees, acknowledged Tuesday that it has made errors and pledged to take steps to improve its operations. Steve Bailey, chief executive for loan...

The number of bankruptcy filings in Hawai'i climbed during April, as overextended consumers sought to get out from mounting credit card debt and avoid foreclosure. U.S. Bankruptcy Court filings in Honolulu totaled 158 in April, about one-fifth more than...

Ventura County consumer bankruptcy filings jumped 122 percent last year as lenders toughened refinancing requirements, area bankruptcy attorneys say. County residents filed 1,285 bankruptcies in 2007, up from 580 the previous year, according to data...

Georgia continues to be one of the nation's bankruptcy leaders. Georgia ranked No. 2 nationally for its rate of consumer bankruptcy filings in the first quarter of the year. The bankruptcy courts statewide processed 12,981 consumer filings during the...

Consumer bankruptcies continue to rise, as more families facing money problems give up on the economy. Bankruptcies rose 47.7 percent nationwide in April, from the same period a year ago, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute. The institute used...

As the number of foreclosures surges, people buried under mountains of debt are seeking relief by filing for bankruptcy in ever increasing numbers. It's the option of last resort for those who see no other way out, say bankruptcy attorneys, whose...

Alabama's personal bankruptcy rate was the third-highest in the nation in 2007, and bankruptcy lawyers in Birmingham think the situation could worsen this year with problems with home loans rise. The American Bankruptcy Institute said this week there...

Despite strict regulations to discourage bankruptcy, the number of filings last year in Sacramento nearly doubled in a tidal surge that outpaced growth around the nation and left court officials expressing astonishment. In total, 17,397 people and...