Credit Card Debt in Bankruptcy

Can you bankrupt all your credit cards?  Most credit card debt ("plastic debt") is dischargeable in bankruptcy.  People who incur credit card obligations, such as to Visa, Discover,  Mastercard, and American Express and considered "unsecured debts" which can be discharged in bankruptcy unless they were incurred through fraud or without the intent of repaying.   For more details on which debts are dischargeable, please look at the information under Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 on this site.

If you have not run-up your credit cards in the last few months, have not taken out a lot of cash advances or done a lot of recent balance transfers, then you should be able to get rid of those credit card debts in a bankruptcy case.   Of course, the only way to properly assess this is to have a comprehensive consultation to evaluate your situation.

Certain credit cards, such as department store cards (for example, Best Buy, Circuit City, Sears, Furniture Stores, etc.) are secured by the items you purchase from them.  In those cases, the debt can still be discharged, but the stores retain a lien against whatever you purchased from them.   Thus, if you wish to keep those items, you would need to repay whatever their current fair market value is determined to be.  Usually, due to depreciation in the value (particularly computers and other electronics), the amount you would have to pay is minimal.