Consumer bankruptcies top 1 million since Jan.
NEW YORK - US consumer bankruptcies rose past 1 million through the first nine months of the year, the highest since 2005 changes to bankruptcy laws.
Personal bankruptcies totaled 1,046,449 for the period, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute and National Bankruptcy Research Center. For the first nine months of 2005, the figure was 1.35 million.
“Bankruptcy filings continue to climb as consumers look to shelter themselves from the effects of rising unemployment rates and housing debt,’’ said Samuel Gerdano, executive director of the Bankruptcy Institute.
Personal bankruptcies in September totaled 124,790, which the institute, an organization of bankruptcy professionals, said was the fourth-highest in a single month since 2005, and up from 88,663 in September 2008.
Bankruptcy filings remain behind the record of 2.1 million set in 2005, when 630,000 Americans sought court protection in the two weeks before revisions to federal law in October made it harder for individuals to erase debts.
