Last year, nearly 1.6m Americans filed for relief from their creditors. That number has almost doubled in the past decade. Under current law, people get their debts wiped away by the mere act of filing under Chapter 7 of the bankruptcy code. But a new law, the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, makes that much harder. It imposes a means test that would force people who earn more than their state's median income into Chapter 13 of the code, which requires debtors to submit to a repayment plan. It would also make poorer debtors jump through many more hoops to get relief.
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