In short
Chapter 13 is a court-approved repayment plan: you keep your property, pay what you can afford to a trustee every month for three to five years, and whatever eligible debt is left at the end is discharged.
Chapter 7 is fast and ends with a clean slate. Chapter 13 is slow and built for people who have something to protect, usually a house, a car, or property that exemptions don't cover.
Who can file
Chapter 13 is for individuals with regular income. Wages count. So do self-employment income, Social Security, a pension, or anything else steady enough to fund a monthly payment. Corporations and LLCs can't file under Chapter 13, though a sole proprietor can.
There are debt limits. As of October 2026, unsecured debts have to be under $526,700 and secured debts under $1,580,125. Congress built in an adjustment every three years, so those numbers move. The current figures are on the U.S. Courts website under Chapter 13 Bankruptcy Basics.
How the plan works
The plan is a document you write and file with the court. It says how much you'll pay each month, for how long, and how the trustee will divide that money. The law sorts your debts into three groups and treats each one differently:
- Priority debts are paid in full through the plan. Recent income taxes and past-due child support or alimony are the common ones.
- Secured debts are the ones tied to property, like a mortgage or car loan. The plan can spread missed payments out over its full length while the regular payments continue.
- Unsecured debts are credit cards, medical bills, and personal loans. They get whatever your budget has left after the first two groups. That can be a small fraction of what's owed.
One floor applies: unsecured creditors have to receive at least as much as they would have gotten if your non-exempt property had been sold in a Chapter 7 case. That's why exemptions still matter in Chapter 13 even though nothing is sold.
Three years or five
The length depends on income. If your household income is below your state's median for a household your size, the plan runs three years unless the court approves a longer one. If it's above the median, the plan generally runs five. No plan can run longer than five years.
The income comparison happens on Form 122C-1. Filers above the median also complete Form 122C-2, which calculates disposable income using set expense allowances.
The timeline
- Before filing: a credit counseling course from an approved provider, taken within the 180 days before the petition is filed.
- Filing day: the petition goes in and the automatic stay starts. Collection calls, lawsuits, garnishments, and foreclosure sales stop.
- Within 14 days: the plan is due, if it wasn't filed with the petition.
- Within 30 days: the first plan payment is due to the trustee. Payments start before the court has approved anything.
- 21 to 50 days after filing: the 341 meeting of creditors, where the trustee asks questions under oath about the paperwork and the plan.
- Within 45 days after that meeting: the confirmation hearing, where a judge decides whether to approve the plan.
- Three to five years: monthly payments. A debtor education course has to be finished before the last one.
- After the final payment: the discharge order.
What Chapter 13 can do that Chapter 7 can't
- Stop a foreclosure and give you years, not weeks, to catch up on missed mortgage payments.
- Let you keep property worth more than your exemptions cover.
- Protect a co-signer on a consumer debt from collection while the plan is running.
- Stretch out tax debt and support arrears that Chapter 7 wouldn't erase.
- Take filers whose income is too high to pass the Chapter 7 Means Test.
The forms
Chapter 13 uses most of the same national forms as Chapter 7: the petition, the schedules, and the Statement of Financial Affairs. The differences are the 122C income forms and the plan itself.
The plan is where courts split. Some use the national plan form, Official Form 113. Most require their own local plan form instead, and a plan on the wrong form gets rejected. The local forms page shows which one your court uses.
What it costs
As of October 2026 the court fee to file Chapter 13 is $313. It can be paid in installments. Unlike Chapter 7, there's no fee waiver. The trustee also keeps a percentage of each plan payment, up to 10%, which is built into the monthly amount. The full breakdown is in What it costs to file.
When a plan doesn't finish
A lot of Chapter 13 plans don't reach the final payment. Five years is a long time, and a job loss or medical bill can break a budget that worked on paper. When payments stop, the law provides four paths:
- Modification. The court can approve a changed plan with a different payment.
- Conversion. The case can be converted to Chapter 7 if the filer qualifies.
- Hardship discharge. Available in narrow circumstances, when the failure is outside the filer's control and creditors have already received at least what Chapter 7 would have paid them.
- Dismissal. The case ends without a discharge, the automatic stay lifts, and creditors can collect again.
Good to know: Chapter 13 is the harder chapter to do without a lawyer. The plan has to satisfy a list of legal tests before a judge will confirm it, and the trustee will object if it doesn't. The forms are public and self-filing is allowed, but self-filed Chapter 13 cases reach a discharge far less often than ones filed with an attorney.
For a side-by-side with the other chapters, see Chapter 7 vs 13 vs 11.