First-pass empirical view of multi-filer bankruptcy recidivism. Across 199,848 unique debtors, who comes back to bankruptcy court — how often, how soon, and where? Several findings are unique to this dataset; published academic literature has rarely measured these patterns at scale.
| Filings per debtor | Unique debtors | Cumulative | % of all debtors |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 189,827 | 189,827 | 95.0% |
| 2 | 8,697 | 198,524 | 4.4% |
| 3 | 1,086 | 199,610 | 0.5% |
| 4 | 173 | 199,783 | 0.09% |
| 5 | 42 | 199,825 | 0.02% |
| 6 | 14 | 199,839 | 0.007% |
| 7 | 4 | 199,843 | 0.002% |
| 8 | 3 | 199,846 | 0.0015% |
| 9 | 1 | 199,847 | 0.0005% |
The post-dismissal interval distribution is the standout finding:
| Filing interval (days) | p25 | median (p50) | p75 | p90 | n |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All consecutive multi-filings | 329 | 812 | 2,057 | 3,674 | 10,660 |
| After prior discharge | 753 | 1,821 | 3,071 | 4,454 | 2,988 |
| After prior dismissal | 33 | 78 | 246 | 1,071 | 6,296 |
The contrast is dramatic. Post-discharge filers wait approximately 23x longer than post-dismissal filers (1,821 vs 78 days at the median). Two distinct populations:
Top districts by percentage of cases that come from multi-filers (within sample):
| District | Multi-filer cases | Total cases | % from multi-filers |
|---|---|---|---|
| nvbk | 50 | 327 | 15.3% |
| tnwbk | 289 | 1,980 | 14.6% |
| moebk | 191 | 1,356 | 14.1% |
| txsbk | 4,256 | 30,411 | 14.0% |
| mowbk | 5,459 | 40,915 | 13.3% |
| ksbk | 5,025 | 38,765 | 13.0% |
| paebk | 158 | 1,674 | 9.4% |
| caebk | 69 | 781 | 8.8% |
| flsbk | 3,645 | 43,930 | 8.3% |
| almbk | 86 | 1,039 | 8.3% |
Districts with high Chapter 13 share (Texas Southern, Missouri Western, Kansas, Tennessee Western) cluster at the top of the recidivism rate — consistent with Chapter 13's higher plan-failure rate producing more refiling.
The data have direct implications for two procedural-rule frameworks:
Section 362(c)(3) limits the automatic stay to 30 days for filers with one prior dismissed case in the past year; § 362(c)(4) eliminates the stay entirely for filers with two or more prior dismissed cases. The 33-day p25 / 78-day p50 post-dismissal refiling intervals show that a substantial fraction of refilings happen within the §362(c)(3) one-year window — meaning the stay limits ARE biting frequently in practice. See § 362(c) successive-filings reference.
The 5-year (~1,821-day) median post-discharge interval suggests that attorney-represented multi-filers ARE successfully waiting out the §1328(f) lookback (4 years for Ch.7/11/12 → Ch.13; 2 years Ch.13 → Ch.13). This is consistent with the §1328(f) research project's finding that ~12% of successive Ch.13 filers are caught by the bar — the population caught is the smaller subset who don't wait out the rule, often pro-se filers unaware of it. See §1328(f) findings.
Multi-filer identification is by normalized debtor name (uppercase, punctuation stripped). Common surnames (Smith, Johnson, etc.) can produce false-positive matches between unrelated debtors. SSN-based matching would be cleaner but isn't available in public PACER data.
The 10,021 multi-filer count likely includes some false positives from name collisions. Estimated upper bound on false-positive rate based on common-surname-frequency analysis: 5-15%. True multi-filer count is plausibly 8,500-9,500.
Three CSVs published under CC BY 4.0:
Open Bankruptcy Project (2026). Bankruptcy Recidivism Patterns Dataset, v0.1. 501(c)(3) public charity (EIN 41-5159631). URL: https://viz.openbankruptcyproject.org/recidivism/ License: CC BY 4.0