If a creditor is still trying to collect on a debt your bankruptcy wiped out, you’re dealing with a post-bankruptcy discharge violation, and you have real leverage. Your discharge order is a permanent federal court injunction under 11 U.S.C. § 524, and a creditor who ignores it can be held in civil contempt and ordered to pay your attorney’s fees, your actual damages, and in bad cases punitive damages on top.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S. Code 524 – Effect of Discharge The path runs through the same bankruptcy court that issued your discharge, and a 2019 Supreme Court decision now controls how those cases are judged.
What Counts as a Violation
The discharge injunction bars any action to collect a discharged debt from you personally. That covers the obvious conduct — phone calls, letters, emails, text messages, lawsuits, wage garnishment — whether the contact comes from the original creditor or a collection agency that bought the debt.
Some violations are less obvious. A secured creditor still holding a valid lien is allowed to enforce that lien by foreclosing or repossessing, but it cannot use the threat of repossession to pressure you into paying the discharged personal balance, and it cannot chase you for a deficiency after selling the collateral.2United States Courts. Discharge in Bankruptcy – Bankruptcy Basics Inaccurate credit reporting is another common problem: after discharge, the account should show a zero balance with a bankruptcy notation, and a creditor that keeps reporting the debt as active, past due, or in collections is misrepresenting your obligation. A creditor also cannot withhold money it owes you — a refund, a deposit, a rebate — and apply it to the discharged debt.3Government Accountability Office. Comptroller General Decision B-205373
Before you treat contact as a violation, check a few boundaries. The discharge only reaches debts that existed on the filing date; a new obligation you took on after filing is fair game for collection. It does not touch surviving liens on your property. It does not shield co-signers, guarantors, or anyone else who was liable on the same debt — under § 524(e), your discharge leaves their liability intact, so a creditor pursuing your co-signer is not violating your injunction.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S. Code 524 – Effect of Discharge And if you signed a reaffirmation agreement on the debt before discharge, you voluntarily kept that liability, and collection on it is lawful (though a reaffirmation that failed the strict formalities of § 524(c) is unenforceable and worth a closer look).
Building Your Evidence File
A contempt case rises or falls on documentation. Pull your core bankruptcy records first: the case number, the Discharge of Debtor order, and the schedules showing that this specific debt was included. Those documents establish that the injunction applies.
Then preserve every piece of post-discharge contact as it comes in:
- Save collection letters, emails, and account statements in original form. Don’t write on them.
- Log every call with date, time, duration, caller’s name, and what was said. Record calls if your state allows one-party consent recording.
- Screenshot texts and app notifications with the date, time, and sender visible; if the case may be contested, preserve the native message files as well.
- Pull your credit reports and save dated copies of any discharged debt still showing as active or delinquent.
- Keep copies of any summons, complaint, or other court paper the creditor serves on you.
The goal is a clean timeline showing collection activity after your discharge date. Gaps let the creditor argue the contact never happened or was a one-off mistake.
Sending a Cease-and-Desist Letter
Before filing anything in court, send the creditor a formal written demand. It isn’t legally required, but it does two useful things: it gives the creditor a clean chance to stop, and it destroys any later argument that the creditor didn’t know about the discharge.
Keep the letter factual. Identify your bankruptcy case number and discharge date, describe the specific collection activity that violated the injunction, and demand that all collection efforts stop immediately and any inaccurate credit reporting be corrected. Send it certified mail, return receipt requested. When the signed green card comes back, you have proof of receipt. Any collection activity after that date is powerful evidence that the creditor knew and continued anyway.
Filing a Motion for Contempt
If the letter doesn’t stop the conduct, file a Motion for Contempt (sometimes styled a Motion to Enforce the Discharge Injunction) in the same bankruptcy court that administered your case.4United States Bankruptcy Court, Northern District of Indiana. Motion for Order of Contempt The court’s authority to enforce its own discharge order comes from 11 U.S.C. § 105(a), which lets it issue any order necessary to carry out the Bankruptcy Code.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S. Code 105 – Power of Court
Your motion has to establish three things: that a discharge injunction exists, that the creditor knew about it, and that the creditor took specific actions violating it. Attach the discharge order, the collection communications, the certified mail receipt from your warning letter, and any credit reports showing bad entries. Serve the motion on the creditor under Federal Rule of Bankruptcy Procedure 9013 — first-class mail on individuals, and for corporations, mail to an officer or authorized agent.6Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure Rule 9013 – Motions Form and Service
Reopening a Closed Case
Most discharge violations surface after the bankruptcy is closed. If yours has, file a motion to reopen under 11 U.S.C. § 350(b), which lets the court reopen a case “to accord relief to the debtor, or for other cause.”7Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure Rule 5010 – Reopening a Case This is routine, not extraordinary. And there is no filing fee to reopen when the purpose is to address a discharge violation under § 524 — the federal fee schedule specifically exempts it.8United States Courts. Bankruptcy Court Miscellaneous Fee Schedule File the motion to reopen and the contempt motion together.
At the Hearing
Expect defenses. The creditor may claim an innocent error, argue the debt wasn’t actually discharged, or characterize the contact as valid lien enforcement rather than personal-debt collection. Your certified mail receipt — proof the creditor was warned and kept going — undercuts most of these. If the court finds a violation, it will order the creditor to halt collection and fix credit reporting errors, and it will turn to sanctions.
The Standard the Court Will Apply
Since 2019, one national standard controls. In Taggart v. Lorenzen, the Supreme Court held that a creditor can be held in civil contempt for violating a discharge order only if there was “no fair ground of doubt” that the order barred the creditor’s conduct.9Justia Law. Taggart v. Lorenzen, 587 U.S. ___ (2019) The question is objective: could any reasonable person have believed the collection was lawful?
The Court rejected both extremes. A creditor’s sincere but unreasonable belief that it wasn’t violating the discharge is not a shield. But intentional collection is not automatic contempt either if the creditor had a genuinely reasonable legal argument.9Justia Law. Taggart v. Lorenzen, 587 U.S. ___ (2019) In practice, if there’s a real dispute about whether your particular debt fell into a nondischargeable category, the creditor may escape sanctions even if it turns out to be wrong. But a creditor sending dunning letters on a plainly discharged credit card balance has no fair ground of doubt. The more straightforward your debt’s inclusion in the discharge, the stronger your case.
What You Can Recover
A finding of civil contempt opens three categories of relief, and together they’re what makes the injunction more than a piece of paper.
Attorney’s fees and costs. The most common remedy is reimbursement of the fees and costs you spent bringing the contempt motion. Without fee-shifting, most debtors couldn’t afford to enforce the discharge they already earned, so courts award these routinely when contempt is found.
Actual damages. Courts can compensate you for real harm caused by the unlawful collection: lost wages if you missed work, out-of-pocket costs, and emotional distress. Emotional distress awards are stronger when backed by therapy notes, medical records, or detailed testimony about the impact on your life, though some courts award them on credible testimony alone.
Punitive damages. If the conduct was egregious, repeated, or deliberate — the classic example being a creditor that acknowledged your cease-and-desist letter and kept calling — the court can add punitive damages to punish and deter. Courts reserve these for the worst cases, and they can be substantial. The court also has inherent authority to impose fines payable to the court itself. Once a creditor sees a well-documented contempt motion with a certified mail receipt attached, most choose to settle rather than let a judge rule.
When a Third-Party Collector Is Involved
If the entity contacting you is a collection agency, debt buyer, or collection attorney rather than the original creditor, you may have a second cause of action under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Most federal circuits allow FDCPA claims for attempts to collect debts discharged in bankruptcy, and those claims can be filed in or outside bankruptcy court.
The FDCPA adds three recovery categories: actual damages, statutory damages up to $1,000 per lawsuit whether or not you prove actual harm, and attorney’s fees and costs.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 U.S. Code 1692k – Civil Liability The statutory damages piece is especially useful when a collector’s violation caused stress and disruption but not easily quantified financial loss.
The FDCPA generally does not reach original creditors collecting their own debts, so when the violator is the original creditor the contempt route is your main lane. When a third-party collector is in the picture, running a contempt motion and an FDCPA claim in parallel maximizes what you can recover.