Bankruptcy filings in the U.S. averaged 3,541 each business day in September and are on track to reach 807,000 for the year, a 37 percent increase over the 590,500 filings in 2006.September had the "highest average daily filings in all of 2007 and the largest since'' an October 2005 federal bankruptcy law made it harder to eliminate debt, said Mike Bickford, president of Oklahoma City-based Jupiter eSource LLC's Automated Access to Court Electronic Records, or AACER, service.
Bankruptcy filings of all types -- personal and business --totaled almost 67,300 in September, a 21.2 percent increase over the same month in 2006, Bickford said, citing court records. Filings through September are 44.2 percent higher than for the same period last year, he said.
There were 4,444 corporate filings to liquidate or reorganize in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings during the January-September period, an 18.5 percent gain over the first nine months of 2006.
Bankruptcy filings dropped in late 2005 and early 2006 after consumers rushed to file ahead of the more restrictive October 2005 law. In the two weeks before that new law, 630,000 Americans filed bankruptcy petitions, bringing the total filings that year to a record 2.1 million.
