When Can You File Bankruptcy: Waiting Periods and Discharge Rules

You can file bankruptcy anytime you meet the basic eligibility rules if you’ve never filed before. If you have a prior case, when you can file bankruptcy again depends on which chapter you used last time, which chapter you want to use now, and whether that earlier case ended in a discharge or a dismissal. The waits run from 180 days to eight years. Separate timing rules — for credit counseling, residency, income, tax debts, and asset transfers — can also affect whether filing today is the right move, even when you’re legally allowed to file.

Waiting Periods After a Prior Discharge

If your earlier bankruptcy ended with a discharge, four scenarios cover most refilings. Every clock starts on the filing date of the earlier case, not the date the discharge was entered or the case closed.

Chapter 7 after Chapter 7: Eight years from the filing date of the prior Chapter 7.¹
Chapter 13 after Chapter 7: Four years from the filing date of the Chapter 7 case.²
Chapter 13 after Chapter 13: Two years from the filing date of the earlier Chapter 13.²
Chapter 7 after Chapter 13: Six years from the filing date of the Chapter 13. The six-year wait falls away if your Chapter 13 plan paid 100 percent of allowed unsecured claims, or paid at least 70 percent and the court found the plan was proposed in good faith and represented your best effort.¹

Because a Chapter 13 plan itself can run three to five years, part of the wait may already be behind you by the time you finish the plan.

Waiting Periods After a Dismissed Case

A dismissal is not a discharge. Your debts weren’t wiped out, and the refiling rules are shorter but come with traps.

You cannot refile for 180 days if your earlier case was dismissed because you disobeyed court orders or failed to appear at required hearings. The same 180-day bar applies if you voluntarily dismissed your case after a creditor had already asked the court to lift the automatic stay.³

A dismissal for a routine administrative reason, such as missing a document deadline, doesn’t necessarily trigger the 180-day bar. Read your dismissal order carefully. When a court dismisses a case “with prejudice,” the refiling ban can run longer than 180 days. There is no statutory cap. Judges have wide discretion, and in some cases the order permanently bars refiling on the same debts.

Automatic Stay Limits for Repeat Filers

Even if you’re legally clear to refile, filing shortly after a dismissal weakens the automatic stay, the order that stops collection calls, wage garnishment, and foreclosure the moment you file.

One dismissal in the year before your new filing shortens the automatic stay to 30 days. To keep it in place, you must file a motion within that 30-day window and prove the new case was filed in good faith.⁴ The statute presumes bad faith if your prior case was dismissed because you didn’t file required documents, didn’t provide adequate protection to creditors, or didn’t perform under a confirmed plan. You can overcome that presumption only with clear and convincing evidence.

Two or more dismissals in the previous year mean no automatic stay takes effect at all when you file the new case.⁵ Creditors can proceed as though you never filed. You can ask the court to impose a stay, again within 30 days and with a good-faith showing, but until the judge grants it you have no protection.

Credit Counseling Before You File

Before any petition can be filed, you must complete a credit counseling briefing from a nonprofit agency approved by the U.S. Trustee’s office.⁶ It can be done by phone or online and produces a certificate of completion.

The timing is strict. The session must fall within the 180 days before your filing date. Take it too early and the certificate expires. Skip it and the court will dismiss your case. A narrow emergency exception exists if you can show exigent circumstances and that you tried but couldn’t obtain counseling within seven days; even then, the court can grant only a 30-day extension, with a possible additional 15 days for cause.⁶ The Department of Justice maintains the official list of approved agencies.⁷

Where You Can File If You Moved Recently

You must file in the federal judicial district where you’ve lived for the greater part of the 180 days before your petition, which works out to at least 91 days.⁸ If you moved recently, you either wait until you hit that threshold in your new district or file back where you came from.

A separate, longer clock controls which state’s property exemptions you can claim, and exemptions determine what you keep. You must use the exemptions of the state where you’ve been domiciled for the 730 days (about two years) before filing. If you haven’t lived in one state for that full stretch, you use the exemptions of the state where you lived the longest during the 180 days before that 730-day period began. If that formula leaves you with no state to draw from, you can use the federal exemption list.⁹ Moving to a state with generous exemptions doesn’t buy you access to them until you’ve been there two full years.

Timing Your Chapter 7 Filing Around Income

Chapter 7 eligibility depends on income, and how income gets counted opens up a timing lever. “Current monthly income” is your average monthly income from all sources during the six full calendar months ending before the month you file.¹⁰ That figure is annualized and compared to the median for a household your size in your state, using tables the U.S. Trustee Program publishes.¹¹

Below the median, you pass the means test. Above it, the court subtracts allowable expenses; if too much disposable income remains, the filing is presumed abusive and you may be pushed into Chapter 13 or have the case dismissed.¹²

If your income was higher a few months ago and has since dropped because of job loss or reduced hours, each additional month you wait pushes a higher-earning month out of the six-month window and lowers your average. That’s a common reason to hold off. Social Security benefits, certain veterans’ disability payments, and payments to victims of terrorism or war crimes are excluded from the income calculation.¹⁰

Waiting to Discharge Tax Debts

Income tax debt can sometimes be discharged, but only if it clears three separate timing rules. Miss any one and the debt survives.

Three-year rule: The return must have been due, including extensions, at least three years before your petition. A 2022 return due April 15, 2023, wouldn’t be eligible until at least April 15, 2026.¹³
Two-year rule: A late-filed return must have been filed at least two years before your petition. Tax debt from a return you never filed, or from a substitute return the IRS prepared for you, is generally not dischargeable.¹⁴
240-day rule: The IRS must have assessed the tax at least 240 days before you file. That window extends by the time any offer in compromise was pending plus 30 days, and by the time any prior bankruptcy stay was in effect plus 90 days.¹³

Tax debts from fraudulent returns or willful evasion are never dischargeable.¹⁴ Payroll taxes you collected from employees but didn’t remit are also off-limits. If tax debt is a major reason you’re filing, waiting until all three clocks have run is often the difference between wiping the debt out and still owing it after the case.

Waiting Out an Asset Transfer

Moving property before you file doesn’t put it beyond the trustee’s reach. The trustee can unwind transfers you made within two years of your filing date if you got less than fair value while insolvent, or if the transfer was intended to hide assets from creditors. Transfers into self-settled trusts carry a ten-year lookback.¹⁵ Payments to insiders like family or business partners within the year before filing can be clawed back as preferences if the insider got more than they would have received through the bankruptcy.

If you’ve sold cheaply, given away, or transferred significant property in the last two years, filing now can mean losing those transactions to the trustee. Waiting for the transfer to fall outside the lookback is sometimes the better play, though two years is long enough that it isn’t always practical.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 727 – Discharge
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 1328 – Discharge
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 109 – Who May Be a Debtor
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 362 – Automatic Stay
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 US Code 362 – Automatic Stay
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 109 – Who May Be a Debtor
7
United States Department of Justice. List of Credit Counseling Agencies Approved Pursuant to 11 USC 111
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 US Code 1408 – Venue of Cases Under Title 11
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 522 – Exemptions
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 101 – Definitions
11
United States Department of Justice. Census Bureau Median Family Income By Family Size
12
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 US Code 707 – Dismissal of a Case or Conversion to a Case Under Chapter 11 or 13
13
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 507 – Priorities
14
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 523 – Exceptions to Discharge
15
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 USC 548 – Fraudulent Transfers and Obligations