Filing for Chapter 13 bankruptcy means a long commitment to repaying all or part of your debts under a court-order Plan (I’m capitalizing here because the actual document is called a “Chapter 13 Plan”). This Plan usually lasts between 3-5 years, and in some parts of the country the failure rate can exceed 70% or more. So the deck is stacked against you, and a successful Chapter 13 bankruptcy case relies heavily on your good relationship with your lawyer. Whereas a Chapter 7 can be quick and painless, Chapter 13 is more of a long-term partnership. At the end of the case, there’s one thing that every Chapter 13 debtor must do in order to obtain a discharge. That’s the filing of Official Form 283, called, Chapter 13 Debtor’s Certifications Regarding Domestic Support Obligations. The U.S. Bankruptcy Code takes very seriously how the system impacts children and former spouses. In fact, many sections of the law were changed with the specific purpose of protecting children and former spouses from the possibility that a consumer might use some sort of loophole to minimize their responsibilities to take care of their families. One of the things the bankruptcy system recognizes is that domestic support obligations are handled by state law and local courts rather than by the federal judiciary. These two systems don’t often share information, so it’s difficult for the court to be sure that a bankruptcy debtor is doing all that is legally required under state laws.
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