Child support, spousal support, most student loans, income taxes less than three years old, debts from fraud or drunk driving injuries, criminal fines and restitution, and any debt you fail to list all survive a Chapter 7 discharge. So does a debt secured by a lien, to the extent of the collateral. Everything else on a typical consumer schedule is wiped out.
Support obligations: no exceptions
Domestic support comes through a bankruptcy untouched. Child support, spousal support, and arrears on either. The obligation continues, the arrears remain due, and a support agency can keep collecting during the case because the automatic stay doesn't reach most support proceedings.
The same is true of most debts assigned to a former spouse in a divorce judgment, even ones that aren't labeled support. If the family court ordered you to pay the joint Chase card and hold your ex harmless, Chapter 7 discharges your obligation to Chase but not your obligation to your ex. That distinction has surprised a lot of people three years after their divorce.
Student loans, mostly
Federal and private student loans survive the discharge unless you file a separate lawsuit inside the case, called an adversary proceeding, and prove undue hardship. For twenty years that was nearly impossible. Since the Department of Justice changed its approach in November 2022, settlements on federal loans have become far more common. We explain what the process now looks like on the page about Chapter 7 and student loans.
If student loans are the only real debt you have, bankruptcy alone probably won't fix it. That's one of the situations where we tell people not to file.
Taxes: the timing rules
Some income taxes are dischargeable and some aren't, and the difference is arithmetic. A tax debt can be discharged if the return was due more than three years before filing, the return was actually filed more than two years before, and the tax was assessed more than 240 days before. Miss any of those and the tax survives. So do payroll taxes, sales tax, and any tax connected to a fraudulent or unfiled return. A tax lien recorded before the case stays attached to your property either way.
The full breakdown, with the tolling traps that reset the clocks, is on the page about Chapter 7 and tax debt.
Debts a creditor can fight to keep
A separate group is dischargeable unless the creditor objects in time and wins. These are the section 523(a)(2), (4) and (6) debts: money obtained by fraud or a false financial statement, debts from embezzlement or breach of a fiduciary duty, and debts from a willful and malicious injury.
In consumer practice this shows up in two ways. The first is a card run up right before filing. Luxury purchases over a threshold within 90 days of filing, or cash advances over a smaller threshold within 70 days, are presumed non-dischargeable. The second is a creditor who claims you lied on a loan application. The creditor has to file a complaint within 60 days after the 341 meeting or the claim is lost forever. Most never do. Card issuers file when the numbers are large and the timing is ugly. That's why we ask about the last six months of charges before filing, and why sometimes we wait.
Injuries, fines and the rest of the list
The statute has nineteen categories and most never come up. The ones that do:
- Death or personal injury caused by driving while intoxicated. Property damage from the same crash can be discharged; the injury claim can't.
- Criminal fines, penalties and restitution, including traffic court fines and the court fees attached to a conviction.
- Government fines that are penalties rather than compensation, such as a code enforcement penalty.
- Debts from a prior bankruptcy where discharge was denied or waived.
- Condo and HOA assessments that come due after the filing date, for as long as you hold title.
- Any debt you didn't list, in a case where the creditor didn't know about the filing in time to object.
The last one is why we ask for every creditor, including the cousin you borrowed $500 from and the medical office you're not sure ever billed you. Listing them costs nothing. Leaving them off can cost the discharge on that debt.
Secured debts: a different kind of survival
A car loan or a mortgage is discharged in the sense that you can't be sued for it. But the lien survives. Stop paying and the lender takes the collateral, bankruptcy or not. That's a feature, not a loophole. It lets you decide whether to keep paying on the car and keep it, or walk away with no deficiency. We cover the choices on the pages about keeping your car and keeping your house.
Before you file Chapter 7, the debts get sorted into three piles: gone, survives, and survives only if someone fights. The size of the second pile decides whether filing is worth it.
The divorce decree case is the one I make people pull out of the closet before we file. Halfway down page six there's a paragraph assigning the joint Discover card to my client and telling him to indemnify his ex. He hasn't looked at it since 2021. Discover gets discharged. His obligation to her doesn't, and if she ends up paying that card she can come after him for every dollar. Filing without reading that page is how someone gets sued by their ex-wife eighteen months after a discharge they thought was final.
Questions people ask about this
Are student loans ever discharged in Chapter 7?
Only through a separate adversary proceeding proving undue hardship. Since the 2022 Justice Department guidance, federal loan cases are settled more often than they used to be. Private loans remain harder. The discharge order itself never covers them.
Can I discharge back child support?
No. Support arrears survive every kind of bankruptcy, and collection on them generally continues during the case. Chapter 13 can help by spreading the arrears over a plan, but it can't reduce them.
What happens if I forget to list a creditor?
In a no-asset Chapter 7 in the Ninth Circuit, an omitted dischargeable debt is usually still discharged, because the creditor wouldn't have received anything anyway. Debts that require a timely objection, like fraud claims, are the exception. List everyone. It's the safer path and it costs nothing.
Is a DUI debt dischargeable?
Fines and restitution from the criminal case are not. A civil judgment for injury or death caused by drunk driving is not. Property damage from the same accident is, unless the creditor proves it was willful and malicious.
Are HOA dues discharged?
Dues that came due before you filed are discharged. Dues that come due after the filing date are not, as long as you still own the unit. If you're surrendering a condo, the assessments keep accruing until the title changes hands, which can take a while.
Talk it through with the attorney
Send us your creditor list, or read it to Naomi on a free video call, and you'll know before filing which debts will still be there afterward.