What debts are discharged under chapter 13?

If you are filing bankruptcy, you may wonder what is discharged chapter 13. The answer is that none of your debts are going to be immediately discharged under chapter 13, since that isn't the way a chapter 13 bankruptcy workers. When you are filing a chapter 13 bankruptcy, you are permitted to include several different types of debts in the filing. Types of debts that can be dealt with by a chapter 13 include:

• Personal loans
• Credit card debt
• Medical bills

There are also things you cannot include such as:

• Unpaid child support obligations
• Unpaid student loan debt
• Some back tax debt

So, if you can include all these different things but they aren't just discharged, what does happen to them?

• You will create a repayment plan to repay some part of the money you owe to the different creditors you have
• The amount you will be required to pay will be based on the income that you are generating
• The repayment plan will be scheduled to last anywhere from three to five years, depending on how much you can afford to pay and how much you owe
• The money will be paid to the trustee, who will apportion if appropriately to the different creditors to whom you owe money

If you are successful in making the payments on the repayment plan for the duration, then at the end, anything that is left that would still be owed if you had not filed chapter 13 will be discharged.

Chapter 13 has become a very common form of bankruptcy, both because people don't have to turn over assets like in a chapter 7 and because many people are no longer able to qualify for chapter 7 under the income requirements set by bankruptcy reforms in 2005.

To get help filing chapter 13 or throughout the chapter 13 process, you should have an experienced bankruptcy lawyer as a guide.