If a creditor is still trying to collect on a debt your bankruptcy wiped out, you are dealing with one of the most common post-bankruptcy discharge violations, and the law gives you real tools to stop it. Your discharge is a permanent federal court injunction under 11 U.S.C. § 524, and a creditor that ignores it can be held in civil contempt, ordered to pay your attorney’s fees, and hit with actual and punitive damages.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S. Code 524 – Effect of Discharge The path runs from documentation, to a written warning, to a contempt motion in the bankruptcy court that issued your discharge.
What Counts as a Violation
The discharge injunction bars any act to collect a discharged debt from you personally. That covers phone calls, letters, emails, texts, lawsuits, wage garnishment attempts, and the use of a lien as leverage to squeeze payment out of you rather than out of the collateral. It applies equally to the original creditor and to any collection agency or debt buyer that took over the account.
Two subtler categories come up often. Inaccurate credit reporting is one: after discharge, the tradeline should show a zero balance with a notation that the debt was discharged in bankruptcy. A creditor that keeps reporting the account as active, past due, or in collections is misrepresenting your obligations and may be violating both the injunction and the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The other is setoff. A creditor that owes you money — a refund, a deposit, some other payment — cannot withhold it and apply it against a discharged debt.2Government Accountability Office. Comptroller General Decision B-205373 That is self-help collection, and it is prohibited.
Two boundaries matter before you conclude a creditor is out of line. First, liens survive discharge. A mortgage or auto lender still holds its lien on the collateral, and it can foreclose or repossess to enforce that lien.3United States Courts. Discharge in Bankruptcy – Bankruptcy Basics What it cannot do is come after you for any deficiency after the collateral is sold. Second, the discharge only reaches debts that existed before you filed. If the account was opened or the charge was incurred after your petition date, the creditor is entitled to collect. Check your schedules and your filing date before you treat contact as a violation.
Build the Paper Trail First
A contempt case is won on documentation. Pull your case number, your Discharge of Debtor order, and the schedule listing the debt at issue. Those three things prove the debt was included and the injunction attached to it.
Then preserve everything the creditor sends or does, as it happens:
- Save collection letters, emails, and account statements in original form. Do not write on them.
- Log every call: date, time, duration, caller, and what was said. If your state allows one-party consent recording, record.
- Screenshot texts and app notifications so the date, time, and sender are visible. If the matter is likely to be contested, export the messages in their native format as well.
- Pull your credit reports, mark any discharged account still showing as active or delinquent, and save dated copies.
- Keep any summons, complaint, or other court paper served on you.
The goal is a clean timeline showing collection activity after your discharge date. Gaps invite the argument that the contact never happened or was a one-off mistake.
Send a Certified Cease-and-Desist
Before going to court, send the creditor a written demand. It is not legally required, but it does two things at once: it gives the creditor a chance to stop voluntarily, and it destroys any later claim that the creditor did not know about your discharge.
Identify your bankruptcy case number and discharge date, describe the specific collection conduct, and demand that all collection efforts stop and any inaccurate credit reporting be corrected. Keep it factual. A judge will likely read this letter, so it should read well. Send it certified mail, return receipt requested. When the signed green card comes back, you have proof of notice. Any collection activity after that date is much harder for the creditor to explain away.
File a Motion for Contempt
If the letter does not end the behavior, file a Motion for Contempt or Motion to Enforce the Discharge Injunction in the same bankruptcy court that administered your case.4United States Bankruptcy Court, Northern District of Indiana. Motion for Order of Contempt The court’s authority to enforce its own discharge order comes from 11 U.S.C. § 105(a), which lets it issue any order necessary to carry out the Bankruptcy Code.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S. Code 105 – Power of Court
The motion needs to show three things: the discharge injunction exists, the creditor knew about it, and the creditor took specific acts violating it. Attach the discharge order, the collection evidence, the certified mail receipt from your warning letter, and any credit reports showing bad entries. Service follows the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure.6Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure Rule 9013 – Motions Form and Service
If Your Case Is Already Closed
Most discharge violations surface after the case has closed. If yours has, file a motion to reopen under 11 U.S.C. § 350(b), which permits reopening “to accord relief to the debtor, or for other cause.”7Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure Rule 5010 – Reopening a Case Reopening to address a discharge violation is routine, not extraordinary. And there is no filing fee to reopen for this purpose; the federal fee schedule specifically exempts it.8United States Courts. Bankruptcy Court Miscellaneous Fee Schedule File the motion to reopen alongside the contempt motion.
What to Expect at the Hearing
Creditors typically defend with one of three arguments: the violation was an innocent mistake, the debt was not really discharged, or the contact was about enforcing a valid lien rather than collecting a personal debt. Your evidence package, especially the return receipt, cuts against the innocent-mistake defense. If the court finds a violation, it will order the creditor to stop and to correct any credit reporting immediately, and it will move on to sanctions.
The Taggart Standard the Court Will Apply
In 2019, the Supreme Court set a single national test for discharge-violation contempt in Taggart v. Lorenzen: a creditor can be held in civil contempt only if there was “no fair ground of doubt” that the discharge order barred the creditor’s conduct.9Justia Law. Taggart v. Lorenzen, 587 U.S. ___ (2019) Put plainly, the question is whether an objectively reasonable creditor could have thought the collection was lawful.
The Court rejected both extremes. A creditor’s sincere but unreasonable belief that it was not violating the injunction is not a defense. But it is also not enough that the creditor’s act was intentional; if there was a genuine legal question about whether the debt was discharged, sanctions may not attach even if the creditor turns out to be wrong.9Justia Law. Taggart v. Lorenzen, 587 U.S. ___ (2019) The clearer the debt’s inclusion in your discharge, the stronger your contempt case. A collector chasing a plain-vanilla credit card balance has no fair ground of doubt. A creditor arguing in good faith that the debt falls into a nondischargeable category may.
What the Court Can Award
Civil contempt sanctions are designed to make you whole and to deter the creditor from doing it again.
The most common award is your attorney’s fees and litigation costs. Fee-shifting is central here, because without it many debtors could not afford to enforce the right the court already granted them. Beyond fees, courts can award actual damages: lost wages if you missed work dealing with the violation, out-of-pocket costs, and emotional distress. Documentation strengthens an emotional distress claim — therapy notes, medical records, detailed testimony about the impact — but some courts have awarded these damages based on credible testimony alone.
Where the conduct is egregious, repeated, or part of a pattern, courts add punitive damages on top. The classic case is a creditor that received your cease-and-desist, acknowledged it, and kept calling. Courts also have inherent authority to impose fines payable to the court. The combined exposure is why most creditors settle once they see a well-supported contempt motion.
When You Have an FDCPA Claim Too
If the entity violating your discharge is a third-party debt collector — a collection agency, debt buyer, or collection law firm rather than the original creditor — you may also have a claim under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Most federal circuits allow FDCPA claims for attempts to collect discharged debts, and those claims can be filed in or outside the bankruptcy court.
The FDCPA offers three categories of recovery: actual damages, statutory damages up to $1,000 per individual lawsuit regardless of whether you can prove actual harm, and reimbursement of attorney’s fees and court costs.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 U.S. Code 1692k – Civil Liability The statutory damages piece is useful when the violation caused stress and inconvenience without an easily quantifiable financial loss. The FDCPA generally does not reach original creditors collecting their own debts, so if it is your original lender violating the discharge, contempt is your primary route. When a third party is involved, running both tracks can increase your total recovery.
Situations Where Collection Is Still Lawful
A couple of scenarios look like violations but are not, and it is worth checking them before you file.
The first is a reaffirmation agreement. If you signed one before your discharge was entered, you voluntarily kept personal liability on that specific debt, and a creditor collecting on it is not violating the injunction. Reaffirmation agreements are only enforceable if they meet the strict requirements of § 524(c): signed before discharge, accompanied by the required written disclosures, and filed with the court. You have a right to rescind up to the later of 60 days after the agreement is filed or the date the discharge is entered, in writing to the creditor.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S. Code 524 – Effect of Discharge If you missed that window, the collection is lawful, though a defective agreement is unenforceable and worth reviewing.
The second is a co-signer or guarantor. Your discharge only eliminates your personal liability. Section 524(e) says the discharge of your obligation does not affect the liability of any other party on the same debt.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S. Code 524 – Effect of Discharge A creditor contacting your co-signer about the same debt is not violating your injunction; it is pursuing someone whose liability was never wiped out. The violation runs only when the collection activity is directed at you personally for a debt that was discharged.