BOSTON – Massachusetts Chapter 7 bankruptcy filings – the most commonly used type of bankruptcy filing – jumped 58 percent year over year for the second quarter, according to data collected by The Warren Group, a Boston-based financial and real estate tracker.
In the three-month period that ended in June, 4,489 Chapter 7 filings were entered in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. That represented a 58.1 percent surge from the 2,839 filings in the same year-ago months and a 36.6 percent increase from the first three months of 2009.
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For the first six months of the year, Chapter 7 filings in Massachusetts were up 35.9 percent, rising to 7,774 filings from 5,722 filings.
“The dramatic jump in bankruptcy filings shows just how hard it has been for consumers to keep up with their bills in this tough economy,” CEO Timothy M. Warren Jr. said in a statement this morning.
In Bristol County, Chapter 7 filings were up last quarter by 52.7 percent, rising to 539 from 353 filings.
Chapter 7 filings, in which the debtor’s property is liquidated and the proceeds are distributed to creditors, accounted for 82 percent of bankruptcy filings in the Bay State last quarter.
Chapter 11 filings rose 48.8 percent statewide, with 64 filings last quarter. That was up from 43 filings in the same 2008 quarter.
While Chapter 7 and 11 filings were on the rise, Chapter 13 filings, which require debtors to arrange for a three-to-five-year repayment plan, dropped 14.7 percent in the second quarter. They fell from 1,078 filings in the second quarter of 2008 to 919 filings last quarter.
The Warren Group Inc. is a provider of New England real estate data and the publisher of Banker & Tradesman and other journals. Additional information is available at TheWarrenGroup.com.
