Filing-to-Discharge Lag Distribution

How long does a federal bankruptcy actually take from petition to discharge order? 128,000+ closed cases in our corpus — full percentile breakdown by chapter and by district.

104

Ch.7 median lag (days)

1,728

Ch.13 median lag (days = 4.7 years)

1,090

Ch.11 median lag (days = 3.0 years)

98 – 122

Ch.7 p25-p50 spread — very tight

Lag percentiles by chapter

Chapter	n	p5	p25	p50	p75	p90	p99
Ch.7	87,683	90	98	104	126	247	1,357
Ch.13	40,201	916	1,283	1,728	1,890	1,964	2,353
Ch.11	262	253	486	1,090	2,332	2,980	4,043

Read the Ch.7 distribution carefully. The 90 – 247 day band (p5 to p90) is suspicious-looking concentration around the statutory minimum waiting period after the 341 meeting (60 days post-petition for objection deadline + a few weeks for discharge order). The p99 of 1,357 days reflects asset cases or adversary-tied delays.

Median Ch.7 lag by district (top 20 by volume)

District	n	p25	p50	p75	p90
mowbk	19,452	96	102	119	225
flsbk	18,530	99	104	117	284
ksbk	17,269	98	113	147	295
txsbk	10,594	96	104	133	469
cacbk	4,987	101	103	109	122
ilnbk	3,257	102	109	115	134
ohnbk	3,068	98	103	112	162
flmbk	2,846	97	105	122	207
mabk	1,183	108	122	168	327
nyebk	980	108	118	140	188
mnbk	377	90	94	98	102

Median Ch.13 lag by district (top 20 by volume)

District	n	p25	p50	p75	p90
ksbk	11,908	1,274	1,630	1,900	1,974
flsbk	9,445	1,188	1,660	1,875	1,939
mowbk	8,239	1,336	1,700	1,843	1,922
txsbk	6,239	1,524	1,862	1,916	1,971
ilnbk	917	1,363	1,742	1,881	1,982
flmbk	606	981	1,304	1,849	1,939
insbk	396	1,536	1,881	1,935	2,013
kyebk	243	1,750	1,855	1,890	1,941
kywbk	200	1,785	1,863	1,922	2,031

Download the data (CC BY 4.0):
filing_lag_by_chapter.csv filing_lag_ch7_by_district.csv filing_lag_ch13_by_district.csv

Notable patterns

Minnesota Ch.7 has implausibly tight lag. p25 = 90, p90 = 102 days. Twelve-day spread across 90% of cases. The cleanest, tightest discharge pipeline in the corpus — possibly indicating a streamlined no-asset process.
Texas Southern Ch.7 p90 = 469 days. Long tail compared to comparable-volume districts. Florida Southern p90 = 284 days; Missouri Western p90 = 225 days.
Ch.13 lags cluster near the 60-month statutory plan max. Most p90 values exceed 1,920 days (5.26 years). Plans that complete are completing at the wire, not early.
Eastern Kentucky and Western Kentucky Ch.13 p25 = 1,750-1,785 days. Even the bottom quartile of completed cases is 4.8+ years. Plans don't end early in those districts.

Methodology

Source: 220,037 federal bankruptcy cases. Filtered for cases with non-null date_filed and date_discharged. Capped at 5,000 days (negative or extreme outliers excluded). Only cases that actually received discharge are in the population — dismissed cases are excluded by design.

Survivorship caveat. This dataset captures lag among cases that completed. Cases that dismissed don't appear here. A district with high dismissal rate could have either fast discharges (because slow cases drop out) or slow discharges (because the system is sticky); cross-reference with our quick-dismissal dataset to disentangle.

← Back to viz hub | View on GitHub