Search public court records from U.S. Bankruptcy Court online for free with easy to use case search tools for finding court cases and case summaries by case number, case name, party, attorney, judge, docket entry, and more. Filter cases further by date of filing, jurisdiction, case type, party type, and, party representation.
UniCourt gives you access to Federal Bankruptcy Court records across the State of United States, so you can search a range of different types of bankruptcy cases including Chapter 7, Chapter 9, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, and Chapter 15. You can even drill down further and search for bankruptcy cases involving Adversary Proceedings, Debt Discharge Challenges, Debtor Discharge Challenges, Petitions, Revoked Confirmed Plans, and Other Proceedings. With UniCourt, you can lookup federal Bankruptcy Court cases online, find the latest docket information, view case summaries, check case statuses, download court documents, as well as track lawsuits and get alerts on new case updates.
Leverage UniCourt’s Legal Data as a Service (LDaaS) to get bulk access to court data from the United States Bankruptcy Courts. We collect, organize, standardize, and normalize court data from courts throughout the federal court system’s Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) and the state courts, and make it all easily accessible and useful through our web app and Legal Data APIs.
The United States federal court system has three tiers: the U.S. District Courts, which are the trial courts; the U.S. Courts of Appeals, which are the first levels of appeal; and the Supreme Court of the United States, which is the final level of appeal. There are 94 District Courts, 13 Courts of Appeals, and one Supreme Court across the entire country. The U.S. Bankruptcy Courts are a unit of the U.S. District Courts. Currently, there are 90 federal bankruptcy courts.
The U.S. Bankruptcy Courts have exclusive jurisdiction over bankruptcy cases. Federal bankruptcy law aims to give a debtor, which can be a person or a business, a “fresh start” by relieving the debtor of most debts and giving them the opportunity to repay creditors.
The majority of bankruptcy cases are filed by consumers under one of the following chapters in the Bankruptcy Code:
The procedural aspects of the bankruptcy process are governed by the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure, also known as the "Bankruptcy Rules,” and the local rules of each Bankruptcy Court.
When a bankruptcy case is filed a trustee is appointed by the U.S. Trustee, a Justice Department entity, to administer the estate. Then, a meeting of creditors must be held, commonly known as the 341 meeting, no matter what chapter the case is filed under. The debtor is required to attend this meeting. The meeting of creditors gives the trustee and creditors the opportunity to ask questions about the debtor’s financial affairs and the extent of the debtor’s holdings. The case trustee, not a bankruptcy judge, presides over this hearing. A Bankruptcy judge may later issue decisions relating to the case.
Sometimes adversary proceedings are filed. Adversary proceedings are separate civil lawsuits that arise in bankruptcy cases, including actions to object to or revoke discharges, to obtain injunctions or other equitable relief, and to determine the dischargeability of debt.
Decisions of the Bankruptcy Courts may be appealed to the District Court, or depending on the circuit, to a bankruptcy appellate panel. If certain statutory requirements are met, the Court of Appeals may authorize a direct appeal from a Bankruptcy Court judge’s ruling to the Court of Appeals. Decisions may be further appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
U.S. Bankruptcy Court Officials
U.S. Bankruptcy Court judges are appointed by a majority vote of the Circuit Court judges in the jurisdiction in which they sit, upon the recommendation of the Judicial Council for that region. The Judicial Council consists of Courts of Appeals and District Court judges and is chaired by the Chief Judge of the Circuit.
Bankruptcy judges are appointed to 14 year, renewable terms. To be eligible to be a Bankruptcy Court judge, a person must be: a member of the bar in at least one state and in good standing with every bar of which they are a member; of good character; and not related to an appointing judge or a District Court judge that they would be serving. There are approximately 350 Bankruptcy judgeships in the U.S.