11 USC 1328: Chapter 13 Discharge Requirements and Exceptions

To earn a Chapter 13 discharge, you have to satisfy four Chapter 13 discharge requirements: complete every payment your confirmed plan calls for, certify that any domestic support obligations are current, finish an approved personal financial management course and file the certificate, and confirm you aren’t blocked by a recent prior discharge. Meet all four and the court enters a discharge order under 11 U.S.C. 1328(a) that eliminates most remaining debts covered by your plan. Miss any one and the discharge doesn’t issue, no matter how faithfully you paid.

The Four Things You Must Do

The core requirement is finishing the plan. Chapter 13 plans run three to five years depending on household income. If your income is below your state’s median, the plan caps at three years, though a court can extend it to five for cause. Above-median earners get a five-year plan.¹ Every payment the confirmed plan schedules has to be made.

Then come three additional conditions that trip up debtors who assume the last payment ends the case:²

Domestic support certification. If you owe child support or alimony under a court order or statute, you must certify that every payment due through the date of certification has been made, including amounts that were due before you filed.
Financial management course. You must complete a personal financial management course from a provider approved by the U.S. Trustee Program and file the certificate of completion. This is a different course from the pre-filing credit counseling.
No recent prior discharge. You cannot receive a Chapter 13 discharge if you already received one in a Chapter 13 case filed within the previous two years, or in a Chapter 7, 11, or 12 case filed within the previous four years.

All four have to line up. If your support certification isn’t on file, or the financial management certificate is missing, the judge will not enter a discharge order regardless of how clean your payment history looks.

What the Discharge Actually Wipes Out

The completed-plan discharge under Section 1328(a) is broader than what Chapter 7 offers, which is why it’s sometimes called a “superdischarge.” Most debts included in or provided for by the plan are eliminated, along with any claims that were disallowed during the case.²

The practical difference: a Section 1328(a) discharge only incorporates a limited set of the nondischargeability categories in Section 523(a). Debts arising from willful damage to another person’s property, for example, are eliminated under a completed Chapter 13 discharge even though the same debt would survive Chapter 7. That gap is one of the strongest reasons to push through the plan rather than seek an early exit.

Debts That Survive

Certain debts remain your responsibility even after a full-plan discharge. The statute carves them out expressly.

Domestic support obligations. Child support and alimony survive every type of bankruptcy discharge.³

Certain tax debts. Recent income taxes, taxes where the return was filed late or not filed at all, and taxes tied to fraud all survive. Payroll taxes collected from employees but not forwarded to the government are also nondischargeable because you held that money in trust.³ Older income taxes can sometimes be discharged, but the rules are technical and turn on when the return was filed and when the tax was assessed.

Debts from fraud. If you borrowed money or obtained goods through misrepresentation, the creditor can ask the court to declare that debt nondischargeable. The creditor has to raise the objection. If nobody objects, the debt is discharged like any other.³

Student loans. Federal and private student loans survive unless you can prove that repayment would impose an undue hardship on you and your dependents. Most courts apply the Brunner test: you can’t maintain a minimal standard of living while repaying, your financial situation is likely to persist, and you made good-faith efforts to repay.³ Meeting that standard is notoriously difficult, though some courts have begun applying it less rigidly.

Criminal restitution and fines. Restitution and criminal fines included in a sentence on a conviction survive. So do damages from a civil action based on willful or malicious conduct that caused personal injury or death, under Section 1328(a)(4).²

Long-term obligations maintained through the plan. Debts treated under Section 1322(b)(5), typically home mortgages or other long-term loans where you cured a default through the plan but kept making regular payments, are excluded. You still owe the remaining balance after the case ends.

If You Can’t Finish: The Hardship Discharge

If circumstances beyond your control make completing the plan impossible, Section 1328(b) allows a hardship discharge. Courts don’t grant these freely. You have to show three things:²

You’re not at fault. The failure has to stem from circumstances you shouldn’t be held accountable for, such as a severe medical condition or permanent disability. Losing a job you could have kept, or voluntarily cutting your income, won’t qualify.
Creditors already got the Chapter 7 amount. Unsecured creditors must have received at least as much through the plan as they would have gotten in a Chapter 7 liquidation of your nonexempt assets.
Modifying the plan isn’t feasible. The court must find that adjustment under Section 1329 isn’t a workable alternative.

The hardship version is significantly narrower than a completed-plan discharge. Under Section 1328(c), all of the Section 523(a) nondischargeability categories apply, not just the limited set that governs a full-plan discharge.² Debts from willful property damage and other categories that would have been wiped out at the finish line will survive a hardship discharge. That is the real cost of not completing the plan.

Modifying the Plan Instead

Before the court entertains a hardship discharge, you’re expected to look at modification. Under Section 1329, you, the trustee, or a creditor can request changes to a confirmed plan any time before payments are completed.⁴

Modifications can raise or lower payments to a class of claims, extend the payment period up to five years from when the first payment was due, or adjust distributions to reflect payments a creditor received outside the plan. You can also reduce plan payments by the reasonable, documented cost of health insurance you purchase for yourself or your dependents.⁴ Modification preserves the broader discharge you’d earn by finishing. A hardship discharge is a last resort.

Between Your Final Payment and the Discharge Order

Making the last payment doesn’t produce a discharge order on its own. The trustee has to process remaining distributions and file a final report summarizing all financial activity in the case, which alone can take several months. During that window, make sure two documents are already on file: your financial management course certificate and your domestic support certification.² If either is missing, the case sits in limbo until you file it.

Once everything is in place, the bankruptcy judge enters the discharge order. Timing varies by district and caseload, but a few months between last payment and discharge is typical. The case isn’t over just because payments stopped.

What the Discharge Order Does

The discharge is a permanent court order barring creditors from trying to collect discharged debts from you personally. Under Section 524, it voids any pre-existing judgment on those debts and operates as an injunction against lawsuits, garnishment, phone calls, and any other collection activity.⁵

A creditor who deliberately ignores the injunction faces contempt of court. The statute specifically provides that willfully failing to credit payments received under a confirmed plan violates the injunction if it causes material injury.⁵ Remedies can include actual damages, attorney fees, and in serious cases punitive sanctions.

One boundary worth knowing: the injunction covers your personal liability, not liens. Secured creditors keep their liens on collateral. If the plan didn’t pay off a car loan or mortgage in full, the lender can still repossess or foreclose even though you no longer owe the debt personally. The lien follows the property.

When a Discharge Can Be Undone

A discharge isn’t absolutely final. Under Section 1328(e), a party in interest can move to revoke it, but only under narrow conditions: the motion has to be filed within one year of the discharge order, the movant has to prove the discharge was obtained through fraud, and they have to show they didn’t know about the fraud until after the discharge was entered.²

The kind of fraud that supports revocation involves deliberate concealment of assets, fabricated income figures, or other intentional misrepresentation in the filings. Honest mistakes and inadvertent omissions don’t qualify. If the court does revoke, previously eliminated debts are reinstated. After the one-year window closes, revocation is off the table regardless of what surfaces later.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S. Code 1322 – Contents of Plan
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 1328 – Discharge
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S. Code 523 – Exceptions to Discharge
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 1329 – Modification of Plan After Confirmation
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 524 – Effect of Discharge