What Is a Nondischargeable Debt? Types, Examples, and Exceptions

Nondischargeable debts are financial obligations that survive bankruptcy — you still owe them in full after your case closes and the rest of your debts are wiped out. Federal bankruptcy law lists roughly twenty categories of debt that fall into this group, and they split into two practical buckets: debts that are automatically excluded from discharge by statute, and debts that survive only if the creditor goes to court and proves the debt qualifies for an exception.¹ Knowing which of your debts fall into which bucket before you file is the difference between a fresh start and a bankruptcy that leaves your worst obligations untouched.

Debts That Survive Bankruptcy Automatically

Some debts are nondischargeable by operation of law. The creditor doesn’t have to file anything, doesn’t have to prove anything, and doesn’t have to show up in your case. The debt simply keeps existing after your discharge.

Child Support and Alimony

Domestic support obligations are the clearest example. Child support, alimony, and spousal maintenance ordered through a divorce decree, separation agreement, or court order are fully nondischargeable in every chapter.¹ What matters is function, not label. A payment tagged “property settlement” that actually operates as support will be treated as support and cannot be discharged.

Most Recent Tax Debts

Income taxes generally survive bankruptcy. Specifically, a tax debt is nondischargeable if the return was due within three years before you filed your petition, if the tax was assessed within 240 days before filing, or if you filed the return late and less than two years have passed since that late filing.¹² Older income taxes can sometimes be discharged in Chapter 7, but only if all three conditions are met: the return was due more than three years ago, you actually filed it more than two years ago, and the tax was assessed more than 240 days ago. Miss one, and the debt survives.

Two categories of tax debt can never be discharged, regardless of age. Trust-fund taxes — payroll taxes withheld from employees, or sales tax you collected — are treated as money held for the government and were never really yours. And any tax debt tied to a fraudulent return or willful evasion is permanently nondischargeable.

Government Fines and Criminal Restitution

Fines, penalties, and forfeitures owed to a government entity survive bankruptcy as long as they aren’t meant to compensate the government for a specific financial loss.¹ Criminal fines, traffic tickets, and court-ordered restitution from a criminal case are all nondischargeable. Tax penalties get slightly different treatment: a penalty tied to a tax that would itself be dischargeable, and imposed for something that happened more than three years before filing, can sometimes be wiped out.

HOA and Condo Fees That Come Due After You File

If you own a home in a homeowners association or a condo building, any dues or assessments that come due after your bankruptcy filing are nondischargeable for as long as you or the trustee hold title to the property.¹ Pre-filing arrears can usually be discharged, but every month you remain the legal owner, new charges keep accruing and you keep owing them. This trap catches people who file intending to surrender the property but wait months or years for the foreclosure to finish.

Debts You Forget to List

Every debt you want discharged has to appear on your bankruptcy schedules with the creditor’s correct name and address. Leave one off, and if that creditor didn’t otherwise learn about your case in time to file a proof of claim, the debt is nondischargeable.¹ The rule is even stricter for debts that could involve fraud, embezzlement, or intentional injury — the missed creditor must have had time to both file a claim and ask the court to rule on dischargeability. It’s one of the most avoidable mistakes in bankruptcy, and it happens all the time.

Debts That Survive Only If a Creditor Sues

A second group of debts starts out dischargeable. They become nondischargeable only if the creditor files a formal lawsuit inside your bankruptcy case, called an adversary proceeding, and proves the debt fits a statutory exception. If the creditor doesn’t file, or files late, the debt gets discharged like any ordinary unsecured claim.

Fraud and Misrepresentation

A debt you incurred through actual fraud, deception, or a material misrepresentation is nondischargeable if the creditor proves four things: you made a false statement, you intended to deceive, the creditor reasonably relied on it, and that reliance caused a loss.¹ Carelessness doesn’t count. This is intentional fraud.

Credit card debt gets special treatment. Charges over $900 for luxury goods or services made to a single creditor within 90 days before filing are presumed nondischargeable. Cash advances over $1,250 taken within 70 days before filing carry the same presumption.³ Those thresholds took effect April 1, 2025, and adjust periodically. The presumption shifts the burden to you to show the spending wasn’t fraudulent.

A separate rule applies to written financial statements. If you gave a creditor a materially false written statement about your finances, the creditor relied on it, and you meant to deceive, the resulting debt is nondischargeable. Inflated income on a loan application is the classic example.

Embezzlement, Larceny, and Breach of Fiduciary Duty

Debts arising from embezzlement, theft, or fraud committed while you were in a position of trust are nondischargeable.¹ The fiduciary-fraud piece requires a recognized fiduciary role, like a trustee or corporate officer. The embezzlement and larceny pieces don’t require any fiduciary relationship — if you took or converted someone else’s property, the debt survives.

Willful and Malicious Injury

A debt for intentional harm to another person or their property is nondischargeable, but the creditor has to prove both that the injury was willful and that it was malicious.¹ “Willful” means you intended the harmful result, not just the act that produced it. “Malicious” means you acted without justification and in conscious disregard of your duty to the injured party. Negligence and even serious recklessness don’t meet the bar.

Creditors often raise this exception when a borrower sells collateral (like a car with a lien on it) and keeps the money. Whether that counts as willful and malicious injury or just a breach of contract depends on whether the court finds you specifically intended to harm the creditor.

Drunk-Driving Debts

Any debt for death or personal injury caused by driving while intoxicated is nondischargeable. The statute covers motor vehicles, boats, and aircraft.¹ A judgment or settlement from an incident where you were legally impaired survives in both Chapter 7 and Chapter 13.

The 60-Day Deadline

For these creditor-challenge debts, timing is everything. A creditor has 60 days after the first date set for the meeting of creditors (the “341 meeting”) to file the adversary complaint.⁴ Miss that window, and the debt gets discharged regardless of whether it would have qualified as an exception. Extensions can be granted, but only if the creditor asks before the 60 days run out.

Student Loans

Student loans sit in their own category. Federal student loans, most private student loans, and educational benefit overpayments are presumed nondischargeable. The only way out is to file an adversary proceeding and prove that repayment would cause “undue hardship” to you and your dependents.¹ The burden is on you, and it has historically been one of the toughest standards in consumer bankruptcy.

Nine federal circuits apply the Brunner test, which asks whether you can maintain a minimal standard of living while repaying, whether your circumstances are likely to persist, and whether you made a good-faith effort to repay before filing.⁵ The First and Eighth Circuits use a broader “totality of the circumstances” approach.

In November 2022, the Department of Justice issued guidance that changed how the federal government handles these cases. Debtors now complete a standardized attestation form documenting their finances, and the U.S. Attorney’s office may consent to a full or partial discharge instead of litigating.⁶ The legal standard is the same, but for federal-loan borrowers the process has become more workable.

How Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 Compare

The chapter you file under changes which debts survive. In Chapter 7, every exception in § 523(a) applies. Chapter 13 requires you to complete a three-to-five-year repayment plan, but the discharge at the end is broader.⁷

Two categories are dischargeable in Chapter 13 but not in Chapter 7:

Debts for willful and malicious injury to property (not to a person). Property-damage judgments that would survive Chapter 7 can be wiped out at the end of a completed Chapter 13 plan.⁸
Non-support divorce obligations. Property-settlement or equalization payments owed to a former spouse that aren’t classified as support can be discharged in Chapter 13 but not in Chapter 7.⁸

Those two exceptions are why people with large property-damage judgments or divorce equalization debts sometimes choose Chapter 13 even when they could qualify for Chapter 7. Years of plan payments, in exchange for a cleaner slate.

One caveat matters here. If you start a Chapter 13 plan and can’t finish it, you may be eligible for a “hardship discharge,” but that hardship discharge is narrower and doesn’t include the broader Chapter 13 protections above. It falls back to the same set of exceptions that apply in Chapter 7.⁸ You only get the broader discharge if you complete every payment the plan requires.

Nondischargeable Debt vs. Losing Your Discharge Entirely

These two ideas get mixed up all the time, and the difference matters. A nondischargeable debt means one specific obligation survives while the rest of your debts are eliminated. A denial of discharge is much worse: the court refuses to grant you any discharge at all, and every debt you listed remains fully enforceable.

Denial of discharge is governed by a different statute and applies when a debtor has acted in bad faith. Grounds include hiding or destroying assets, falsifying financial records, lying under oath, refusing to comply with court orders, or filing for Chapter 7 too soon after a prior discharge.⁹ If the trustee or a creditor persuades the court to deny discharge, you can go through the entire bankruptcy process, potentially lose assets in a Chapter 7 liquidation, and still walk out owing every dollar you started with. Being less than honest on your schedules is how a bad financial situation becomes a catastrophic one.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 523 – Exceptions to Discharge
2
Internal Revenue Service. Declaring Bankruptcy
3
Federal Register. Adjustment of Certain Dollar Amounts Applicable to Bankruptcy Cases
4
Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure Rule 4007 – Determining Whether a Debt Is Dischargeable
5
Department of Justice. Guidance for Department Attorneys Regarding Student Loan Bankruptcy Litigation
6
Department of Justice. Student Loan Guidance
7
United States Courts. Discharge in Bankruptcy – Bankruptcy Basics
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 1328 – Discharge
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 727 – Discharge