More consumers resorted to bankruptcy last month than did during September. Business bankruptcy filings also moved up.
Businesses and consumers made a combined 70,211 new filings in U.S. Bankruptcy Courts across the country during October.
Last month’s activity was
greater than the prior month, when commercial and consumer bankruptcy filings numbered 67,138.
But bankruptcies have retreated from one year prior, when there were 79,006 filings, according to the data reported by the American Bankruptcy Institute.
“Low interest rates and high filing costs have total bankruptcies on track for the second-lowest total since changes to the bankruptcy law were implemented in 2005,” ABI Executive Director Samuel J. Gerdano said in a written statement.
The national per-capita rate was 2.70 filings per thousand in population during October 2015.
In Tennessee, the per-capita rate was 6.32.
Alabama’s 5.45 per-capita rate followed, then 5.12 in Georgia, 4.44
in Illinois and 4.41 in Utah.
Non-commercial filings made up 67,742 of last month’s U.S. filings.
Consumer activity rose from the 64,933
bankruptcies filed in September.
Filings have slowed, however, since October 2014, when there were 76,127 consumer filings.
For the first-10 months of this year, there were around 674,820 consumer bankruptcy filings.
