What Is a Bankruptcy Petition and How Do You File?

A bankruptcy petition is the formal document you file with a federal bankruptcy court to start a bankruptcy case. The moment the clerk accepts it, an automatic stay takes effect and most creditors have to stop collecting from you. Along with the petition itself, you submit schedules and statements that lay out your debts, income, assets, and expenses so the court can decide what relief you qualify for. Filing takes preparation: you need to pick the right chapter, gather your financial records, complete a credit counseling course, fill out the correct forms, and pay a court fee.

Who Can File

To file bankruptcy in the United States, you must live here, run a business here, or own property here.¹ You must also complete credit counseling with an approved agency within 180 days before you file.² Beyond that, eligibility depends on which chapter you’re using.

Chapter 7

Chapter 7 is open to individuals, businesses, and other entities, though banks, insurance companies, railroads, and certain financial institutions are excluded.¹ Individuals with primarily consumer debts have to pass a means test. If your household income is below the median for your state and family size, you generally qualify.³

If your income is above the median, you complete a longer calculation on Official Form 122A-2 that deducts allowed expenses (housing, transportation, taxes, health care, childcare) from your income. Too much disposable income left over creates a presumption of abuse, and the court may push you toward Chapter 13 instead.³

Chapter 13

Chapter 13 is only for individuals with regular income, and only up to certain debt limits. For cases filed between April 1, 2025, and March 31, 2028, you must owe less than $526,700 in unsecured debt and less than $1,580,125 in secured debt.¹ Above those limits, Chapter 11 reorganization is the alternative.

What to Gather Before You Start

The forms will demand a full financial picture, so pulling records first saves rework. Federal law requires you to provide:⁴

A complete creditor list — names, addresses, and balances, separated into secured debts (mortgage, car loan) and unsecured debts (credit cards, medical bills).
Income documentation for the past six months, plus any pay stubs received in the 60 days before filing.
An inventory of everything you own: real estate, vehicles, bank and retirement accounts, personal property.
Monthly expenses — rent or mortgage, utilities, food, insurance, transportation, and so on.
All current contracts and leases, from your apartment to your phone plan.
Any property you sold, gave away, or transferred recently.
A statement of expected changes in your income or expenses over the next 12 months.

You also have to hand your most recent federal tax return, or a transcript, to the bankruptcy trustee at least seven days before the meeting of creditors.⁵ If a return is missing, file it before you file for bankruptcy; skipping it can get your case dismissed. Keep your credit counseling certificate ready too. It has to be dated within 180 days of your filing.²

The Forms You File

All the standardized forms live on the U.S. Courts website.⁶ Individuals file Official Form 101, the Voluntary Petition for Individuals Filing for Bankruptcy. Corporations, LLCs, partnerships, and other non-individual entities file Official Form 201.⁷

The petition is only the cover sheet. You also file supporting schedules and statements:

Schedule A/B — all property you own or hold an interest in.
Schedule C — property you claim as exempt from creditors.
Schedule D — creditors with secured claims.
Schedule E/F — unsecured creditors, split into priority (like taxes) and general (like credit cards).
Schedule I — your current income.
Schedule J — your current monthly expenses.
Statement of Financial Affairs — a questionnaire on your recent financial history: lawsuits, payments to creditors, transfers of property.

Individual Chapter 7 filers add Official Form 122A (the means test); Chapter 13 filers add Form 122C. Every form is signed under penalty of perjury. Knowingly putting false information on a bankruptcy petition is a federal crime that carries up to five years in prison and fines up to $250,000.⁸⁹

Where and How to File, and What It Costs

You file at the federal bankruptcy court for the district where you live or run your primary business. Attorneys submit filings electronically through the court’s CM/ECF system. If you file without a lawyer (pro se), you can bring paper documents to the clerk’s office, and some courts also let self-represented filers submit electronically.

The filing fee depends on the chapter:

Chapter 7: $338
Chapter 13: $313
Chapter 12: $278
Chapter 11: $1,738

If you can’t pay the full fee upfront, you can ask the court to spread it across up to four installments over 120 days, and for good cause the court can extend the final payment to 180 days.¹⁰ Full waivers exist only for Chapter 7. To qualify, your household income has to be below 150 percent of the federal poverty guidelines and you have to show you can’t pay even in installments.¹¹ For 2026, that threshold is $23,940 for a single person in the continental United States and $49,500 for a family of four.¹² Chapter 13 filers can’t get a full waiver, but the installment option is open to them.

When the clerk accepts your petition, you’re given a case number that identifies your bankruptcy on every future filing and order.

Emergency Filings

If a foreclosure sale, garnishment, or repossession is about to happen, you can file a bare-bones petition, sometimes called a skeleton petition, with just enough paperwork to trigger the automatic stay. At a minimum that’s the voluntary petition, your Social Security number statement, the credit counseling certificate, and a list of creditors.

After that, you have 14 days to file the remaining schedules and statements.¹³ The court can extend that deadline for good cause, but missing it without an extension usually means dismissal, and dismissal ends the automatic stay along with the case.

What the Automatic Stay Protects

The automatic stay is the immediate payoff of filing. Federal law bars most creditors from continuing to collect from you the moment your petition is filed.¹⁴ It stops:

Pending and new civil lawsuits to collect debts.
Wage garnishments for most debts.
Foreclosures and repossessions of your home, car, or other property.
Direct collection contact — calls, letters, demands.

The stay isn’t absolute. Criminal proceedings, most collection of child support and alimony from property outside the bankruptcy estate, certain tax audits and assessments, and family law matters like custody and domestic violence actions all continue.¹⁴ A creditor who violates the stay after being notified can face court sanctions and damages. The stay lasts until your case closes, is dismissed, or a court lifts it for a particular creditor on request.

After the Petition Is Filed

Filing sets the rest of the case in motion. The court mails every creditor on your list a notice of the filing and the automatic stay. A bankruptcy trustee is assigned and schedules a meeting of creditors, known as the 341 meeting, at which the trustee and any creditors can question you under oath about your finances.¹⁵ The meeting usually takes place 20 to 40 days after filing.

You also have a second course to complete. After filing, you take a debtor education (financial management) course. In Chapter 7, the completion certificate is due within 60 days after the first date set for the 341 meeting.¹³ Skip it and the court can deny your discharge, which would leave your debts in place.¹⁶ In Chapter 13, the certificate is due before you receive your discharge at the end of your plan.

The discharge is the court order that wipes out your qualifying debts. In a typical Chapter 7 case, it arrives about 60 days after the 341 meeting, roughly three to four months from filing. In Chapter 13, discharge comes only after you complete the three-to-five-year repayment plan. Some debts survive either way, including most student loans, recent taxes, child support, and alimony.

A Note on Involuntary Petitions

Almost every filing described above is voluntary — you decide to file. Creditors can also force a debtor into bankruptcy through an involuntary petition, but only under Chapter 7 or Chapter 11, and certain debtors such as farmers and family farmers are shielded from it entirely.¹⁷ If you have 12 or more creditors, at least three must join and their combined unsecured claims must total at least $21,050; if you have fewer than 12 creditors, one creditor with an unsecured claim of at least $21,050 can file alone. The court grants an involuntary petition only if you are generally not paying your debts as they come due, and creditors who file in bad faith can be ordered to pay your attorney fees and damages.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S. Code 109 – Who May Be a Debtor
2
U.S. Trustee Program. Frequently Asked Questions – Credit Counseling
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S. Code 707 – Dismissal of a Case or Conversion
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 521 – Debtor’s Duties
5
Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure Rule 4002 – Debtor’s Duties
6
United States Courts. Bankruptcy Forms
7
United States Courts. Official Form 201 – Voluntary Petition for Non-Individuals Filing for Bankruptcy
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 152 – Concealment of Assets, False Oaths and Claims, Bribery
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 3571 – Sentence of Fine
10
Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure Rule 1006 – Filing Fee
11
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 1930 – Bankruptcy Fees
12
United States Courts. 150 Percent of the HHS Poverty Guidelines for 2026
13
Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure Rule 1007 – Lists, Schedules, Statements, and Other Documents
14
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S. Code 362 – Automatic Stay
15
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 341 – Meetings of Creditors and Equity Security Holders
16
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 727 – Discharge
17
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 303 – Involuntary Cases