Bankruptcy wipes out most consumer debt. Credit cards, medical bills, personal loans, old utility balances, deficiency balances after a repossession. All of it can go.
But Congress carved out exceptions. Some debts survive the case no matter how it ends. Knowing which ones matters before you file, not after.
Child support and alimony
Domestic support obligations always survive. Child support, alimony, and maintenance cannot be discharged in any chapter.
A Chapter 13 plan can still help here. It can catch up past due support on a schedule while the rest of your debt gets handled. But the support itself must be paid in full.
Most student loans
Student loans are not automatically discharged. To erase them, you must prove that repaying would cause undue hardship, and that requires a separate case inside your bankruptcy.
Some people win those cases. A federal attestation process has made the path clearer for government loans. But the default rule stands. Plan on student loans surviving unless a court says otherwise.
Recent taxes
Income taxes can sometimes be discharged, but the rules are strict. The debt generally must be old enough, the return must have been filed on time or long enough ago, and there are more timing tests behind those.
Recent income taxes usually survive. So do payroll taxes and any tax connected to fraud. This corner of the law rewards careful timing, and it is a place where the right filing date can change the outcome by thousands.
People in Prospect run into this more than most. Higher incomes mean bigger tax bills when a business year goes wrong or a withholding mistake compounds. The office of Nick C. Thompson works through tax discharge timing in every consultation where tax debt appears. Nick spent his early career as an attorney for the West Virginia state tax department.
Drunk driving injuries
A debt for death or personal injury caused by driving drunk cannot be discharged. That covers civil judgments from a crash where the driver was intoxicated. Criminal fines and restitution survive as well.
Debts from fraud
Money obtained by fraud, false pretenses, or intentional wrongdoing can survive the case. So can debts from theft or embezzlement.
There is a wrinkle here. For some of these, the creditor must object in your case and prove the fraud. If the creditor never objects, the debt may be discharged with everything else. Whether that fight is worth having depends on the facts, which is a conversation for a lawyer, not a blog post.
The full list of exceptions sits in Section 523 of the Bankruptcy Code, which you can read on the Cornell Law School site.
Why the list matters
None of this makes bankruptcy pointless. The opposite, actually.
Say a Prospect household carries a large credit card balance, a tax bill, and student loans. Discharging the cards frees up income to handle the debts that survive. A Chapter 13 can organize all of it into one payment, with the surviving debts paid on a workable schedule and the rest wiped out at the end.
The mistake is filing blind. Someone who assumes everything disappears makes decisions they regret. Someone who knows what survives can time the case, pick the right chapter, and come out ahead. That is the difference a careful review makes before anything is signed.
Get the real answer for your list
Every debt list is different. Nick has practiced law since 1988, holds U.S. Tax Court License number 51, and prepares each petition personally.
Bring your full list to a free consultation and learn what goes and what stays. Call 502-625-0905.