Open Bankruptcy Project

Bankruptcy Filing-Fee Failure Dismissals — Empirical Dataset v0.1

Name: Bankruptcy Filing-Fee Failure Dismissals Dataset v0.1
Creator: Open Bankruptcy Project
Published: 2026-04-27
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

2,749 cases dismissed for "failure to pay filing fee." The empirical pattern is not what casual readers might assume — these aren't filing-day failures by debtors who can't muster $338. They're predominantly Chapter 13 plans that defaulted on fee installments months or years into the case.

Headline findings

99.2%

Filing-fee failures are Chapter 13. Of 2,749 fee-failure dismissals, 2,727 are Ch.13. Only 21 are Ch.7. The Ch.7 IFP waiver under § 1930(f)(3) is working — low-income Ch.7 filers either qualify for a waiver or aren't classified as fee-failure dismissals.

483 days

Median time from filing to fee-failure dismissal. These aren't filing-day failures — they're Ch.13 plan-installment fee-payment defaults that surface 16+ months into the case as the cumulative fee installments fall behind alongside other plan-payment failures.

2005 → 2009

737 fee-failure dismissals in 2005, only 4 in 2009. A 99% drop in three years suggests a procedural-classification regime change as BAPCPA-era Ch.13 fee-payment-via-plan-installment mechanics stabilized. Pre-BAPCPA fee-failure was a routine label; post-BAPCPA it's residual.

The Chapter 7 vs Chapter 13 asymmetry

The 99.2% Ch.13 share is the most striking finding:

Chapter	Fee-failures	Total cases	Rate per 1,000
Chapter 7	21	104,235	0.20
Chapter 11	1	5,739	0.17
Chapter 13	2,727	103,204	26.42

The 132x difference between Ch.7 (0.20/1,000) and Ch.13 (26.42/1,000) reflects the structural difference:

Chapter 7 fee-payment is generally up-front. Filers either pay $338 at filing or apply for IFP waiver under § 1930(f)(3). Below-150%-of-poverty filers can typically waive. Cases that don't pay don't get filed.
Chapter 13 fee-payment is structured into the plan. The $313 filing fee can be paid in installments under FRBP 1006(b), typically as part of plan payments. When plan payments fail (the normal Ch.13 failure mode), the fee-installment payments fail along with everything else.

So "filing-fee failure dismissal" in Ch.13 is a label that captures one specific dimension of plan-payment failure. The underlying phenomenon is Ch.13 plan failure, not "couldn't afford filing fee."

The 2003-2008 era and the post-BAPCPA collapse

The year-over-year pattern is telling:

Year	Fee-failures
2001	13
2002	57
2003	192
2004	393
2005	737 (peak)
2006	694
2007	472
2008	123
2009	4 (post-collapse)
2010-2025	typically 0-9/year

The 2005 peak coincides with the BAPCPA pre-deadline filing surge; the dramatic 2008-2009 collapse points to a procedural-classification regime change. Most likely:

Pre-BAPCPA, "failure to pay filing fee" was the default disposition label for many Ch.13 plan-installment failures. The clerk's office routinely classified plan-installment fee defaults under this disposition.
Post-BAPCPA, classification practice shifted. Plan-installment failures get classified under "Dismissed for failure to make plan payments" (the 10,781-case category we analyzed in the rare-outcomes dataset) rather than under "failure to pay filing fee."

This is a classification-convention finding, not a substantive change in debtor behavior. The underlying plan-failure rate is comparable across the 2005-2009 transition; the label distribution shifted.

Per-district concentration

Top districts by fee-failure rate per 1,000 cases:

District	Fee-failures	Total cases	Per 1,000
txsbk	1,061	30,412	34.89
wiebk	52	1,520	34.21
mowbk	948	42,263	22.43
tnwbk	42	1,980	21.21
flmbk	87	5,699	15.27
ksbk	344	41,650	8.26
flsbk	168	43,932	3.82
moebk	13	4,491	2.89

Texas Southern's 34.89/1,000 is the highest among major districts. Texas Southern is a heavy Ch.13 district, so its fee-failure rate compounds with its Ch.13 share. Wisconsin Eastern shows similar structural concentration in a much smaller absolute volume.

Districts with low fee-failure rates (Florida Southern at 3.82, Florida Middle at 15.27) tend to have either lower Ch.13 share or different classification conventions for plan-installment fee defaults.

Methodology and caveats

What "fee-failure" actually measures

The disposition string "Dismissed for failure to pay filing fee" captures one specific clerk-office classification of a particular type of dismissal. It does NOT capture all cases where the debtor couldn't pay the filing fee — many Ch.7 filers in that situation use the IFP waiver, and many Ch.13 filers in that situation get dismissed under "failure to make plan payments" rather than this specific label.

Researchers wanting empirical data on "access-to-bankruptcy-due-to-fees" should use this dataset alongside IFP waiver data (not currently in the dataset; would need to be extracted from § 1930(f)(3) filings specifically) and the broader plan-payment-failure data.

Open dataset

Citation

Open Bankruptcy Project (2026). Bankruptcy Filing-Fee Failure Dismissals Dataset, v0.1.
501(c)(3) public charity (EIN 41-5159631).
URL: https://viz.openbankruptcyproject.org/fee-failure/
License: CC BY 4.0