Chapter 13 personal bankruptcy filings, which tend to be pricier than the more popular chapter 7 process, are ticking back up after declining during the COVID-19 pandemic due to government interventions, including a moratorium on home foreclosures, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Chapter 13 bankruptcy filings by individuals rose to 10,764 in October, the highest monthly level this year and the fifth monthly increase since May, according to legal-services firm Epiq. Even after rising steadily since May, monthly chapter 13 filings remain far below levels seen in 2019, before the pandemic, Epiq said, based on data from its Aacer business unit. Meanwhile, the more widely used chapter 7 filings have continued to decline. The end of a government-mandated moratorium on home foreclosures in July could well be driving the latest uptick in chapter 13 filings, because the federal moratorium was a big factor behind the decline in those filings since the pandemic started, said Jialan Wang, an assistant professor of finance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
