A nondischargeable debt is a financial obligation that bankruptcy cannot eliminate, so you still owe it in full after your case closes. Federal law lists roughly twenty categories that survive a discharge, including child support and alimony, most recent income taxes, government fines and criminal restitution, student loans, debts obtained by fraud, debts from willful and malicious injury, and any liability for death or injury caused by drunk driving. Some of these debts are protected automatically. Others survive only if the creditor takes you to court inside the bankruptcy case and proves the debt qualifies for an exception.
Knowing which of your debts fall into which bucket is the whole game. Filing without that picture is how people lose assets in a Chapter 7 liquidation and still walk out owing the debts that pushed them under.
Debts That Survive Automatically
Several categories are nondischargeable by operation of law. The creditor doesn’t have to file anything or challenge you in court. The debt simply survives, regardless of which chapter you file.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 523 – Exceptions to Discharge
Child Support, Alimony, and Other Support Obligations
Any obligation established through a divorce decree, separation agreement, or court order that functions as support for a spouse, former spouse, or child cannot be discharged. What matters is whether the payment genuinely serves a support purpose. Courts look at intent and the role the payment plays in the recipient’s financial life, so a payment labeled “property settlement” that actually operates as support will still be treated as nondischargeable.
Most Recent Tax Debts
Income taxes are nondischargeable if the return was due within three years before you filed your bankruptcy petition.2Internal Revenue Service. Declaring Bankruptcy They also survive if the tax was assessed within 240 days before filing, or if you filed the return late and less than two years passed between the late filing and your petition.
Some taxes are always nondischargeable regardless of age. Payroll taxes withheld from employees, sales tax you collected, and any other funds held in trust for the government survive bankruptcy permanently. So does any tax debt tied to a fraudulent return or a deliberate attempt to evade taxes.
Older income taxes can sometimes be wiped out in Chapter 7 if all three conditions line up: the return was due more than three years before filing, you actually filed it more than two years ago, and the assessment happened more than 240 days before your petition. Miss any one of the three and the tax debt stays.
Government Fines, Penalties, and Criminal Restitution
Fines, penalties, and forfeitures owed to a government entity survive bankruptcy as long as they aren’t meant to compensate the government for a specific financial loss. Criminal fines, traffic violations, and court-ordered restitution from a criminal sentence all sit squarely in this category. Tax penalties follow a slightly different rule: a penalty on a type of tax that would otherwise be dischargeable, imposed for something that happened more than three years before filing, can potentially be discharged.
HOA and Condo Fees That Come Due After Filing
If you own property in an HOA community or a condo subject to association fees, any assessments that come due after your bankruptcy filing are nondischargeable for as long as you or the bankruptcy trustee hold an ownership interest. Pre-filing arrears can generally be wiped out, but post-filing fees keep accruing. This catches people who file intending to surrender a property, then find the foreclosure takes months or years to complete. You owe every month’s assessment until the property actually leaves your name.
Debts You Forget to List
Every debt you want discharged has to appear on your bankruptcy schedules with the creditor’s name. If you leave a creditor off and that creditor doesn’t learn about your case in time to file a proof of claim, the debt is nondischargeable. The rule is even stricter for debts involving fraud, embezzlement, or intentional injury — for those, the omitted creditor must have had time both to file a claim and to request a court ruling on dischargeability. This is one of the most avoidable mistakes in bankruptcy, and it happens more often than you’d think.
Debts That Survive Only If a Creditor Sues
A second group of debts starts out dischargeable but can be declared nondischargeable if the creditor takes action. The creditor has to file a formal lawsuit inside your bankruptcy case, called an adversary proceeding, and prove the debt qualifies for an exception. If the creditor doesn’t bother, or misses the deadline, the debt gets wiped out along with everything else.
Fraud and Misrepresentation
A debt you incurred through material misrepresentation, deception, or outright fraud is nondischargeable if the creditor proves four things: you made a false statement, you intended to deceive, the creditor reasonably relied on the statement, and that reliance caused the loss. This is actual, intentional fraud. Carelessness or poor judgment doesn’t meet the bar.
Credit card debt gets special treatment. Charges of more than $900 for luxury goods or services to a single creditor within 90 days before filing are presumed nondischargeable. Cash advances totaling more than $1,250 within 70 days before filing carry the same presumption.3Federal Register. Adjustment of Certain Dollar Amounts Applicable to Bankruptcy Cases Those thresholds took effect April 1, 2025, and are adjusted periodically. The presumption shifts the burden onto you to show the spending wasn’t fraudulent.
A separate rule covers written financial statements. Give a creditor a materially false written statement about your finances (an inflated income figure on a loan application, for instance), and the resulting debt is nondischargeable if the creditor relied on it and you meant to deceive.
Embezzlement, Larceny, and Fiduciary Fraud
Debts from embezzlement, theft, or fraud committed while you held a position of trust are nondischargeable. The fiduciary fraud prong requires you to have been acting in a recognized fiduciary role, such as a trustee or corporate officer. The embezzlement and larceny prongs don’t require a fiduciary relationship. If you took property or converted someone else’s funds, the resulting debt survives.
Willful and Malicious Injury
A debt for intentional harm to another person or their property is nondischargeable, but the creditor has to prove both elements. “Willful” means you intended the harmful consequence, not just the act. “Malicious” means you acted in conscious disregard of your duty to the injured party, without justification. Negligence, even serious recklessness, doesn’t get a creditor there. They need to show you set out to cause harm.
Drunk Driving Injuries
Any debt for death or personal injury caused by driving while intoxicated is nondischargeable. The statute covers motor vehicles, boats, and aircraft. Any judgment or settlement arising from an incident where you were legally impaired survives in both Chapter 7 and Chapter 13.
Student Loans and the Undue Hardship Standard
Student loans sit in a category of their own. Federal student loans, most private student loans, and educational benefit overpayments are all presumed nondischargeable. The only route to discharge is proving in an adversary proceeding that repayment would impose an “undue hardship” on you and your dependents. Historically this has been one of the hardest standards in consumer bankruptcy.
Nine federal circuits apply the Brunner test, which requires three findings: based on current income and expenses, you can’t maintain a minimal standard of living while repaying; your situation is likely to persist for a significant portion of the repayment period; and you made a good-faith effort to repay before filing.4Department of Justice. Guidance for Department Attorneys Regarding Student Loan Bankruptcy Litigation The First and Eighth Circuits use a broader “totality of the circumstances” approach.
In November 2022, the Department of Justice changed how the federal government handles these cases. Debtors now complete a standardized attestation form documenting their financial circumstances, and the U.S. Attorney’s office evaluates the case and may consent to a full or partial discharge instead of fighting it in court.5Department of Justice. Student Loan Guidance The legal standard is unchanged, but the process has become more accessible for borrowers with federal loans. Courts can also grant a partial discharge or restructure the loan terms rather than deciding all or nothing.
Why Chapter 13 Can Discharge More Than Chapter 7
The chapter you file under affects which debts survive. Chapter 7 delivers a faster discharge, usually within a few months, but every exception in the statute applies. Chapter 13 requires a three-to-five-year repayment plan, and the discharge at the end is broader.6United States Courts. Discharge in Bankruptcy – Bankruptcy Basics
Two categories are dischargeable in Chapter 13 but not Chapter 7:
- Debts for willful and malicious injury to property (not personal injury) can be discharged after completing a Chapter 13 plan.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 1328 – Discharge
- Property settlement payments owed to a former spouse that aren’t classified as support can be discharged in Chapter 13.
That gap gives a real strategic reason to consider Chapter 13 if you’re carrying significant property-damage judgments or divorce-related equalization payments. The tradeoff is years of plan payments.
The 60-Day Deadline That Decides Challengeable Debts
For debts that aren’t automatically excluded, the creditor has to sue inside your bankruptcy case to keep them alive. An adversary proceeding is a separate lawsuit with its own complaint, discovery, and potentially trial. The creditor bears the burden of proving, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the debt fits a statutory exception.
The deadline is strict. A creditor has to file the complaint within 60 days after the first date set for the meeting of creditors (the “341 meeting”).8Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure Rule 4007 – Determining Whether a Debt Is Dischargeable Miss that window and the debt is discharged even if it might have qualified as an exception. Extensions have to be requested before the 60 days expire; courts don’t grant them after the fact.
The deadline applies to fraud, embezzlement, larceny, and willful and malicious injury claims. Debts that are automatically nondischargeable, like child support and most taxes, aren’t subject to it, because no adversary proceeding is needed for those in the first place.
Nondischargeable Debt Is Not the Same as Denial of Discharge
Two very different outcomes get confused. A nondischargeable debt means one specific obligation survives while your other debts get wiped out. A denial of discharge means the court refuses to grant you any discharge at all. Every debt you owe remains fully enforceable.
Denial of discharge is a separate provision that applies when the debtor acted in bad faith. Grounds include hiding or destroying assets, falsifying financial records, lying under oath, refusing to comply with court orders, or filing Chapter 7 too soon after a prior discharge.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 727 – Discharge The trustee or a creditor can request it. If a court grants it, you went through the entire bankruptcy process, potentially losing assets in a Chapter 7 liquidation, without eliminating a single debt. Cutting corners on your schedules or being less than candid with the court is how a bad financial situation becomes a catastrophic one.