There are a number of expenses related to filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the United States. While there are ways around almost all of these fees, the processes involved to have these fees waived have been made deliberately complicated and time consuming, simply to discourage people from trying to get the fees waived. Further, the courts have been instructed to scrutinize requests to have the fees waived closely, so it is considerably more difficult to have this done today than used to be the case.

The first fee that you will encounter relates to the pre-filing credit counseling that you must receive. Since 2005, all people filing for bankruptcy are required to have a credit counseling session with a government approved agency to determine if bankruptcy is really the best option. Although this counseling is usually done by non-profits, they still charge a more or less basic fee of $50 for the counseling session and to issue the certificate showing that the session took place. The certificates are standardized throughout the United States and required to be submitted along with the other paperwork to file for bankruptcy. In most cases, this fee can be waived, but the debtor has to negotiate this with the credit counseling agency, which will usually have its own policy in this respect.

Next there are the basic filing fees, which at the time of this writing (July 2010) were $299 for a basic Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing. A Chapter 13 filing had a basic fee of $274. Besides these basic filing fees, there can be any number of small additional fees imposed by the court for various services. The Chapter 7 fees can be waived, but in order to do so, the debtor has to fill out an Official Form 3B and go through a whole process and review prior to the court even accepting the bankruptcy case. Since many people that file for bankruptcy specifically do so for the right of automatic stay, which forces the creditors to stop all collection activity until the case is resolved; however, if one attempts to have the filing fees waived, the whole process takes much longer and there is a lengthy delay between approaching the court and receiving the automatic stay.

While people are allowed to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy “pro se”, or without an attorney, this can frequently lead to many problems and mistakes that can leave the debtor in an even worse position than was the case before the filing. Further, since many debtors attempt to be dishonest with the courts (hiding assets, understating or overstating debts, etc.) the courts are intolerant of many mistakes and even innocent omissions may be viewed as a deliberate attempt at fraud by the courts. The website of the federal bankruptcy courts (found at www.uscourts.gov) in fact specifically advises people to hire an attorney and warns that they have a zero tolerance policy for mistakes and omissions. Bankruptcy attorneys are specialists and generally speaking they charge a premium for their services, but this can be well worth the money for debtors that still have something to lose. Of course bankruptcy attorneys also understand that most of their clients are in bad financial shape and have payment plans and other arrangements available to debtors in need.