Chapter 13 bankruptcy in Florida lets you keep your home, car, and retirement savings while repaying all or part of what you owe over three to five years through a court-approved plan. The moment you file, federal law stops foreclosures, wage garnishments, repossessions, and most collection lawsuits. Florida’s unlimited homestead exemption and uncapped protection for retirement accounts make it one of the more favorable states in the country to reorganize under Chapter 13, though federal income and debt rules still control who can use it.
Who Can File Chapter 13 in Florida
Chapter 13 is limited to individuals with regular income. That includes wages, self-employment earnings, Social Security, and steady contributions from a spouse or partner — anything predictable enough to fund a monthly plan payment. Corporations and partnerships cannot file.
Federal debt limits also apply. As of the adjustment effective April 1, 2025, your unsecured debts must be below $526,700 and your secured debts below $1,580,125.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S.C. 109 – Who May Be a Debtor Only debts that are fixed in amount and not in genuine dispute count toward those ceilings. Cross either limit and Chapter 13 is unavailable; Chapter 11 or Chapter 7 become the options.
You must also have filed your federal, state, and local tax returns for the four tax years before your filing date. Those returns are due by the day before the meeting of creditors, and missing that deadline can get the case dismissed.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S.C. 1308 – Filing of Prepetition Tax Returns
Before you can file, you have to complete a credit counseling session with an agency approved by the U.S. Trustee Program, taken within 180 days before filing. A second course on financial management comes after filing and must be finished before the court will grant a discharge. Miss either one and your debts are not discharged, even after you make every plan payment.3United States Courts. Credit Counseling and Debtor Education Courses Each course runs about an hour and costs roughly $25 to $50.
The Automatic Stay Kicks In Immediately
The moment your petition is filed, federal law freezes nearly all collection activity. Creditors cannot start or continue lawsuits, enforce judgments, garnish wages, foreclose, repossess a vehicle, or place collection calls while the stay is in effect.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S.C. 362 – Automatic Stay For a filer facing a foreclosure sale scheduled next week or a paycheck about to be garnished, that protection is often the whole reason to file.
The stay lasts the length of the case. If your case is dismissed, it disappears and creditors can resume where they left off. And if you had a prior bankruptcy dismissed within the past year, the stay in your new case expires after 30 days unless you can convince the court the new filing is in good faith. A debtor whose earlier case was dismissed for failing to follow a confirmed plan is presumed to be filing in bad faith, and overcoming that presumption takes clear and convincing evidence.
What Florida Lets You Keep
Florida is among the most debtor-friendly states in the country, and its exemptions flow directly into Chapter 13. Under the “best interest of creditors” test, unsecured creditors must receive at least as much through your plan as they would have gotten if your non-exempt assets had been liquidated in Chapter 7. Stronger exemptions therefore mean a lower floor for plan payments.
The Homestead Exemption
Florida’s constitutional homestead exemption protects unlimited equity in your primary residence. The only cap is on land: half an acre inside a municipality or 160 acres outside one.5The Florida Bar. Florida’s Unlimited Homestead Exemption Does Have Some Limits, Part I A Florida homeowner with $500,000 of equity on a qualifying lot keeps every dollar, and Chapter 13 lets that homeowner reorganize while staying in a house that might be sold from under them in a state with capped protections.
Retirement Accounts
Money held in tax-qualified retirement accounts — 401(k)s, 403(b)s, traditional and Roth IRAs, pensions, and government deferred-compensation plans — is fully exempt from creditors with no dollar cap under Florida law.6Florida Senate. Florida Statutes 222.21 – Exemption of Pension Money and Certain Tax-Exempt Funds or Accounts From Legal Processes Because Florida has opted out of the federal exemption system, filers use these uncapped state protections instead of the federal IRA cap of $1,711,975.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S.C. 522 – Exemptions
Wages
Florida exempts the disposable earnings of a head of family from garnishment entirely when those earnings are $750 per week or less.8Florida Senate. Florida Statutes 222.11 – Exemption of Wages From Garnishment A head of family is anyone providing more than half the financial support for a child or other dependent. This protects the income that funds your plan from other creditors trying to reach it.
Personal Property
The state constitution exempts $1,000 of personal property such as household goods and jewelry. If you don’t claim the homestead exemption — because you rent, for instance — Florida law gives you a wildcard of up to $4,000 in personal property of any kind instead.9The Florida Legislature. Florida Statutes 222.25 – Other Individual Property of Natural Persons Exempt From Legal Process You cannot stack the wildcard on top of the homestead; the wildcard is available only when you give up homestead protection entirely.
How the Repayment Plan Works
The plan is the heart of Chapter 13. You propose how much you’ll pay each month, for how long, and how each category of debt is treated. The court has to approve it, but you start making payments right away.
Three Years or Five
Plan length depends on your household income compared to Florida’s median. Below the median, the plan runs three years. At or above the median, you commit to five.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S.C. Chapter 13 – Adjustment of Debts of an Individual With Regular Income Five years is the maximum in either direction. A below-median filer can voluntarily extend to five to lower the monthly payment, and any filer can wrap up early once unsecured creditors are paid in full.
Disposable Income
Your monthly payment is driven by disposable income: what’s left after allowed living expenses come out of your income. Above-median filers use IRS National and Local Standards for categories like food, housing, transportation, and health care rather than their actual spending. Below-median filers generally use actual expenses. Common allowed deductions include housing, vehicle ownership and operating costs, health insurance, childcare, taxes, and court-ordered support. Voluntary expenses, like discretionary retirement contributions, generally don’t reduce disposable income for plan purposes.
Getting the Plan Confirmed
To confirm your plan, the court applies three tests. The best-interest-of-creditors test requires unsecured creditors to receive at least as much as they would in a Chapter 7 liquidation.11United States Courts. Chapter 13 – Bankruptcy Basics The feasibility test requires you to show you can actually make the payments while covering necessary living costs for the entire plan term. And the plan has to be proposed in good faith. Creditors and the trustee can object, and disputes are resolved at the confirmation hearing. Cases with tight budgets face real scrutiny here; if the numbers don’t work, the plan doesn’t get confirmed.
How the Plan Handles Your Debts
Priority Debts
Certain debts have to be paid in full through the plan. Recent income taxes and domestic support obligations — child support and alimony — are the main examples. There’s no discount available on priority debts; the plan has to pay them at 100 percent over its term.11United States Courts. Chapter 13 – Bankruptcy Basics
Mortgage Arrears
One of Chapter 13’s biggest advantages over Chapter 7 is the ability to cure missed mortgage payments while keeping your home. Federal law lets the plan spread your arrears across its duration while you resume making regular monthly payments going forward.12Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S.C. 1322 – Contents of Plan Chapter 7 has no equivalent mechanism, which is why a defaulted mortgage there usually ends in foreclosure. The plan cannot change the interest rate, principal, or schedule of your primary home mortgage itself; it only cures the arrears.
Cramdowns on Other Secured Debts
For secured debts other than your primary home mortgage — think car loans or a mortgage on an investment property — the plan can reduce the secured portion to the collateral’s current market value. Owe $18,000 on a car worth $12,000, and the plan can treat $12,000 as secured (paid in full through the plan, generally at a court-set interest rate) and reclassify the remaining $6,000 as unsecured, which may be paid only in part.
Timing matters. For vehicle loans, the debt must have been incurred at least 910 days — roughly two and a half years — before filing.13Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S.C. 1325 – Confirmation of Plan For other personal property collateral, the purchase must be more than a year old. These rules block someone from buying an expensive item on credit and immediately filing to shed the balance.
Unsecured Debts
Credit card balances, medical bills, and personal loans share whatever disposable income remains after priority and secured claims are handled. Some plans pay unsecured creditors in full; many pay only a fraction, sometimes a few cents on the dollar. Whatever is left unpaid on qualifying unsecured debts is discharged when you complete the plan.
Debts a Chapter 13 Discharge Will Not Erase
Completing your plan wipes out most remaining debt, but some categories survive:
- Child support and alimony remain fully enforceable.
- Student loans survive unless you file a separate action and prove undue hardship, a standard that is very hard to meet.
- Debts obtained through fraud or false financial statements are not discharged.
- Criminal fines and restitution survive.
- Debts arising from injury or death caused by intoxicated driving are not dischargeable.
- Civil judgments for willful and malicious personal injury survive.
- Any long-term debt, like a mortgage cured through the plan, continues on its own terms after the plan ends.
Chapter 13 does discharge a few debts that Chapter 7 would leave in place, including some divorce property settlements and debts from willful damage to another person’s property (as distinct from personal injury). That broader discharge is one reason some filers choose Chapter 13 even when they could qualify for Chapter 7.14Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S.C. 1328 – Discharge
What It Costs
The federal filing fee for Chapter 13 is $313. Chapter 13 has no fee waiver, because the court expects you to have income, but you can pay the fee in installments with court approval. Add the two required counseling courses at roughly $25 to $50 each, and administrative costs land somewhere around $365 to $415 before attorney fees.
Attorney fees are the biggest number. Florida’s bankruptcy courts publish “no-look” fees, a presumptively reasonable flat amount an attorney can charge for a routine Chapter 13 case without itemizing. In the Northern District of Florida, that amount is $5,000.15U.S. Bankruptcy Court Northern District of Florida. Attorney Fees in Chapter 13 Cases in Accordance With Standing Order No. 19 The Middle and Southern Districts set their own. In most cases the attorney fee is paid through the plan itself, so you typically only need a smaller retainer to get the case filed; the rest comes out of your monthly plan payments.
Finally, the Chapter 13 trustee’s commission is built into your plan payment. Federal law allows the standing trustee to collect up to 10 percent of the payments distributed under the plan.16Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S.C. 586 – Duties; Supervision by Attorney General Factor that in when estimating what the plan really costs.
If You Cannot Finish the Plan
Plans get derailed by job losses, medical emergencies, and divorces all the time. You have several options, and the differences matter.
Modify the plan. If income drops or expenses spike, ask the court to modify: lower the monthly payment, extend the term up to the five-year maximum, or reduce the percentage paid to unsecured creditors. This is the first move because it keeps the case and its protections in place.
Dismissal. If you cannot maintain payments and modification isn’t feasible, the case may be dismissed. Dismissal ends the automatic stay immediately, and creditors resume collection where they left off.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 11 U.S.C. 362 – Automatic Stay Mortgage arrears you were curing become due again. Refile within a year and the new case’s automatic stay lasts only 30 days unless you prove good faith.
Conversion to Chapter 7. The case can also be converted to a Chapter 7 liquidation. Non-exempt assets get sold and dischargeable debts wiped out. In Florida, the strong homestead and retirement exemptions often leave very little for a Chapter 7 trustee to sell, but conversion still carries consequences, including a Chapter 7 notation on your credit report that runs 10 years rather than 7.
Hardship discharge. In narrow circumstances the court can grant a discharge even without completed payments. You’d need to show the failure to pay was caused by something truly outside your control (a permanent disability, for example), that unsecured creditors have already received at least what they would have gotten in a Chapter 7 liquidation, and that modifying the plan isn’t possible.11United States Courts. Chapter 13 – Bankruptcy Basics A hardship discharge is narrower than a standard Chapter 13 discharge and doesn’t reach debts that would have been nondischargeable in Chapter 7.
Taxes and Credit After Discharge
The IRS normally treats forgiven debt as taxable income, but bankruptcy is the exception. Debt discharged in a Title 11 case, Chapter 13 included, is excluded from your gross income.17Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S.C. 108 – Income From Discharge of Indebtedness The unsecured balances your plan wipes out do not come back as a tax bill.
The credit hit is significant but not permanent. Federal law allows a bankruptcy to appear on your credit report for up to 10 years from the filing date.18Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 U.S.C. 1681c – Requirements Relating to Information Contained in Consumer Reports In practice, the three major bureaus generally remove a completed Chapter 13 after seven years, though the statute permits the full decade. Scores drop sharply at first, but many filers see meaningful recovery within two to three years, in part because clearing unmanageable balances improves the debt-to-income ratio lenders look at when deciding whether to extend new credit.