How Much Does Chapter 13 Cost? 5 Costs Including the Lawyer Paid Through the Plan

Chapter 13 is the only bankruptcy in which the lawyer can be paid out of the same monthly check that pays the creditors, and that single feature explains most of what the chapter costs. The debtor files, proposes a plan, and then sends one payment a month to a standing trustee for somewhere between three and five years. Everything else, including counsel, rides inside that payment.

So the useful way to price a Chapter 13 case is to open the monthly envelope and sort what is in it. Five costs sit there, one of them paid before the envelope exists.

1. A $313 Filing Fee, Payable in Installments but Never Waived

The judiciary's bankruptcy fee schedule puts the Chapter 13 petition at $313: a $235 statutory filing fee under 28 U.S.C. 1930(a) and a $78 administrative fee. Bankruptcy Rule 1006(b) lets an individual pay it in as many as four installments within 120 days. The waiver in 28 U.S.C. 1930(f) is written for Chapter 7 only, so a Chapter 13 debtor who cannot pay at once has the installment route and nothing else.

2. Two Courses, Paid to Agencies the Government Approves

An individual must complete a credit counseling briefing from an approved nonprofit agency within 180 days before filing, under 11 U.S.C. 109(h). A personal financial management course follows after the petition, and the U.S. Trustee Program says that with limited exceptions a debtor must complete it to receive a discharge.

The providers set their own fees. There is not much more to say about them.

3. The Lawyer, Paid Through the Plan at an Amount the Court Allows

Section 330(a)(4)(B) of the Bankruptcy Code gives the court authority, in a Chapter 13 case where the debtor is an individual, to allow reasonable compensation to the debtor's attorney, judged by the benefit and necessity of the services to the debtor and the other factors listed in section 330. That provision is the legal hinge. Chapter 7 has nothing like it, and in Chapter 7 the estate does not pay the debtor's lawyer.

Once allowed, the fee is an administrative expense, and section 1326(b)(1) directs that unpaid administrative claims be paid before or at the time of each payment to creditors under the plan. In practical terms, a lawyer who takes part of the fee before filing can receive the balance from the trustee out of plan payments. You pay the lawyer the way you pay everyone else in Chapter 13, a little at a time, through the trustee.

How much the court will allow is where local practice takes over. Some bankruptcy courts publish a presumptively reasonable amount, sometimes called a "no-look" fee, that counsel may receive without a detailed itemized application. One published example is Local Bankruptcy Rule 2016-3 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, whose local rules took effect December 1, 2025. Under that rule, counsel may use a short form application when total compensation for services before confirmation is $6,633 or less for a debtor with above-median income, or $5,335 or less for a debtor with below-median income, and the same amounts may be approved through the plan itself if counsel so states in the plan. Those thresholds were adjusted effective April 1, 2025, and are scheduled for readjustment on April 1, 2028.

The no-look figure is a door, not a ceiling. It marks the point below which the court will not ask counsel to show every hour.

Three limits apply to that example, and each matters. The figures belong to one district, covering Philadelphia and Reading, and other districts set different amounts or none. They cover services before confirmation only. And they govern the paperwork, not the result: above the threshold, counsel files a long form application, and the court may allow more if the work justifies it (the objection that a presumptive fee invites every lawyer to charge exactly that amount has some force, though it proves less than it seems, since the court still controls allowance either way).

Section 329 disclosure applies here as in every chapter, so the fee arrangement, including any amount paid before filing, appears on the docket.

4. The Trustee's Percentage, Taken From Every Payment

A standing Chapter 13 trustee is compensated by a percentage of the payments received under plans. Title 28, section 586(e) caps that percentage at 10 percent for a debtor who is not a family farmer, and the Attorney General fixes the actual rate, which varies by district. Section 1326(b)(2) places the trustee's fee alongside each payment to creditors, and section 330(c) sets a floor of $5 per month from plan distributions absent a contrary court order.

At the ceiling, a hypothetical plan payment of $1,200 a month would yield $120 to the trustee each month, before any creditor is paid. The real figure will be lower wherever the district's rate is lower. Most debtors never see the percentage at all, because the envelope arrives at the trustee's office whole and leaves it already divided.

5. The Plan Payment Is the Cost Everything Else Rides On

Fees are the smaller part. The plan itself is measured by the debtor's income, and on an objection by the trustee or an unsecured creditor, section 1325(b) requires the plan to pay unsecured claims in full or to commit all projected disposable income for the applicable commitment period. Section 1322(d) links plan length to the state median: for a debtor below it, a plan runs no longer than three years unless the court approves more, and no plan may exceed five. Separately, section 1325(a)(4) requires that each unsecured creditor receive at least what a Chapter 7 liquidation would have paid.

For a sole proprietor, section 1304 allows the business to keep operating inside the case, which means its income feeds the disposable income calculation and its expenses compete with it. A proprietor who guaranteed a merchant cash advance and now carries that guaranty as an individual debt might find the plan payment larger than the combined fees by many multiples, and there are reasons for that, though the full accounting belongs to counsel.

What the case costs, in the end, is a portion of every month's income for years, with the lawyer and the trustee paid out of the same envelope.

Where Delancey Street Fits, and Where It Does Not

Delancey Street negotiates business debts. Not a law firm, it cannot propose a Chapter 13 plan, represent a debtor before the trustee, or give legal advice about eligibility. It offers business owners a free and confidential review of merchant cash advance and similar balances to see whether a negotiated settlement could resolve them outside court, and it relies on independently licensed attorneys for anything that becomes a legal question. An individual who needs the automatic stay against a pending collection suit, or the binding effect of a confirmed plan, should be speaking with a bankruptcy lawyer. The larger lesson of Chapter 13 applies well beyond it: a cost spread thin across sixty months is easy to underestimate, which is the reason it deserves to be added up.