Do bankruptcy debtors who have filed before fare differently the second or third time around? The empirical answer is sharply chapter-specific: Chapter 13 recidivists fare dramatically worse, while Chapter 7 outcomes are essentially unchanged across filing positions.
| Chapter | Filing position | Cases | Discharge rate | Dismissal rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ch. 7 | First filing | 99,526 | 85.9% | 1.8% |
| Ch. 7 | Second filing | 2,278 | 86.0% | 4.7% |
| Ch. 7 | Third+ filing | 297 | 85.9% | 6.4% |
| Ch. 13 | First filing | 89,491 | 42.2% | 35.6% |
| Ch. 13 | Second filing | 7,358 | 30.0% | 52.3% |
| Ch. 13 | Third+ filing | 1,264 | 21.4% | 56.9% |
| Ch. 11 | First filing | 5,472 | 4.7% | 15.7% |
| Ch. 11 | Second filing | 152 | 5.3% | 17.8% |
The 13.4 percentage-point drop in Ch.13 discharge rate compounds across filing positions and reflects multiple mechanisms working together:
For debtors with a prior discharge in the lookback window (4 years for Ch.7/11/12, 2 years for Ch.13), discharge under § 1328(a) is statutorily unavailable. About 11.8% of successive Ch.13 filers are caught by this rule (per the § 1328(f) findings). These cases produce plan-completion-without-discharge outcomes.
Recidivist filers face limited automatic-stay protection. § 362(c)(3) limits the stay to 30 days for filers with one prior dismissal in the past year; § 362(c)(4) eliminates the stay entirely for filers with two or more prior dismissals. Without stay protection, creditor pressure resumes during the new case and pushes plans toward failure.
Debtors who complete one Ch.13 plan typically don't return for another. The recidivist pool is self-selected for prior-failure patterns: dismissed plans, payment-default histories, and unstable income profiles. By the third filing, the population is concentrated in cases that didn't work the first two times for fundamental reasons.
Recidivist filers are disproportionately pro-se. Attorneys who represented prior cases that failed often decline to represent the same client again; new attorneys are reluctant to take cases with prior dismissals. The pro-se share of Ch.13 third+ filings is substantially higher than the overall pro-se rate, and pro-se filers have lower completion rates generally.
Each filing leaves docket-history baggage. Trustees and judges develop reasoned skepticism about plans from filers with prior failures. Plan-confirmation hearings can be more contentious, with trustees more likely to object to specific plan terms.
Chapter 7's discharge rate is robust to filing position. The reasons:
The Ch.7 dismissal rate does climb (1.8% first-time → 6.4% third+) which reflects the procedural friction, but the discharge rate stays steady because the cases not discharged for reasons specific to recidivism are filtered into other outcome categories ("converted" or "terminated other") rather than appearing as dismissals.
The empirical pattern has direct implications for §1328(f) and §362(c) policy:
Filing position (first / second / third+) is determined by sorting all cases under a debtor's normalized name by filing date. Multi-filer detection by name has known false-positive risk for common surnames; estimated upper bound on false-positive impact 5-15%.
Some "second filings" may be the same continuous bankruptcy case re-filed under a different case number due to procedural conversion; these aren't true recidivism but appear as such in the data. We exclude conversions where the disposition string flags it, but residual noise remains.
first_vs_recidivist_outcomes.csv — full breakdown by chapter and filing position (CC BY 4.0).
Open Bankruptcy Project (2026). First-Time vs Recidivist Bankruptcy Outcomes Dataset, v0.1. 501(c)(3) public charity (EIN 41-5159631). URL: https://viz.openbankruptcyproject.org/first-vs-recidivist/ License: CC BY 4.0