What Does It Cost to File Bankruptcy in Florida?

A straight answer from a Florida consumer bankruptcy attorney. Written in plain English — with the law and the actual court orders cited underneath, so you can check every word.

Most people who call me are worried they can’t afford a lawyer. It’s usually the first question, and it’s often asked apologetically — as though needing to know the price is embarrassing.

It isn’t. Here are the actual numbers.

If money is the reason you haven’t called yet, read Part 4. The Chapter 7 filing fee can be waived entirely if your income is low enough, it can be paid in four installments if it isn’t, and both required classes must reduce or waive their fees for people who can’t afford them — by law.

And one more thing, up front, because it changes the arithmetic for a lot of people: for clients who qualify, we don’t collect attorney’s fees before we file your Chapter 7. Not a retainer, not a deposit. How that works →

We’re going to show you real numbers, including numbers from the administrative orders our own courts have entered. We’re also going to give you the questions to ask any Florida bankruptcy attorney about fees — including us.

Jump to a section

1. The court’s filing fee
2. The two required classes
3. Attorney fees — and what Florida’s courts say is reasonable
4. If you can’t afford it — read this one
5. What “$0 down” actually means — including ours
6. What it costs to not file
7. What can make a case cost more
8. Questions to ask any Florida bankruptcy attorney

Quick answers at a glance

Cost	Chapter 7	Chapter 13
Court filing fee	$338	$313
Credit counseling class (before filing)	~$10–$50	~$10–$50
Financial management class (after filing)	~$10–$50	~$10–$50
Attorney fee	Flat fee, $1,800 and up by complexity	Flat fee, court-set, mostly paid through the plan
When the attorney fee is due	At most firms, before filing. With us, nothing down if you qualify	Mostly through the plan
Trustee fee	None from you	A percentage of plan payments, up to 10%
Can the filing fee be waived?	Yes, if income is below 150% of poverty	No, but installments are available
Can the filing fee be paid in installments?	Yes — 4 payments over 120 days	Yes
Typical money needed to start	Little or nothing if you qualify	Often very little

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Part 1: The court’s filing fee

Short answer: $338 for Chapter 7, $313 for Chapter 13. Set by federal law, identical everywhere in Florida.

The fee is exactly the same in Tampa, Miami, Orlando, Jacksonville, Fort Myers, West Palm Beach, Tallahassee and Pensacola. No attorney can discount it — it goes to the court, not to the lawyer. Anyone who tells you they can reduce it is not telling you the truth.

Here’s what each fee is actually made of:

Chapter 7 — $338	Amount	Chapter 13 — $313	Amount
Filing fee	$245	Filing fee	$235
Administrative fee	$78	Administrative fee	$78
Trustee surcharge	$15	—	—

Notice something surprising: Chapter 13 costs less to file than Chapter 7. Only $25 less, but people expect the opposite, since Chapter 13 is the longer and more involved case.

A few small additional court fees come up only in specific situations — amending your creditor list after filing, reopening a closed case, or converting from one chapter to another. These are set by the Judicial Conference’s fee schedule and are usually modest. Your attorney should tell you at the outset if any apply to you.

The law behind this: 28 U.S.C. § 1930(a)(1) (filing fees for cases under chapters 7 and 13); Judicial Conference of the United States, Bankruptcy Court Miscellaneous Fee Schedule (issued under 28 U.S.C. § 1930(b), covering amendment, reopening and conversion fees).

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Part 2: The two required classes

Short answer: About $20 to $100 total for both. And if you can’t afford them, the agencies are legally required to serve you anyway.

Federal law requires two short courses. They are not the same course, and the timing matters:

Course	When	Roughly
Credit counseling	Within 180 days before you file	$10–$50
Financial management (“debtor education”)	After you file, before discharge	$10–$50

Both are usually done online in about an hour. You must use an agency approved by the U.S. Trustee for your district — we’ll point you to one.

Two practical warnings:

The first course must be completed before you file. Taking it afterward does not count, and the case can be dismissed. This trips up people filing on their own constantly.

The second course must be completed on time or you don’t get your discharge. People occasionally lose a discharge over a $20 class. Do not let that be you — it’s the single easiest way to lose a case that was otherwise finished.

If you cannot afford them: approved agencies must provide these services regardless of your ability to pay, and must have a fee waiver policy for people below 150% of the federal poverty guidelines. You have to ask. So ask.

The law behind this: 11 U.S.C. § 109(h) (pre-filing credit counseling and the 180-day window); 11 U.S.C. § 111 (approval of nonprofit budget and credit counseling agencies); 11 U.S.C. § 727(a)(11) (Chapter 7 debtor education as a condition of discharge); 11 U.S.C. § 1328(g) (same for Chapter 13); 28 C.F.R. §§ 58.14, 58.24 (U.S. Trustee approval standards, including the requirement that agencies provide services without regard to ability to pay).

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Part 3: Attorney fees — and what Florida’s courts say is reasonable

Short answer: In Chapter 13, Florida’s bankruptcy courts publish a “presumptively reasonable” fee, so you can look up what the court itself considers fair. Chapter 7 fees are not court-set; ours start at $1,800 and depend on complexity.

This is the part most websites are vague about. We’re going to be specific, because you can verify it.

Chapter 7: $1,800 and up

Chapter 7 fees are not set by administrative order. What you pay depends on how complicated your case actually is.

A straightforward case — a job, a car, credit card debt — sits at the bottom of that range. Cases involving a business, property you’re trying to protect, recent large purchases, or a creditor already suing you take more work and cost more.

We quote you a flat fee at your free consultation, in writing, before you owe anything. A lawyer who won’t put the number in writing is telling you something.

Chapter 13: the court publishes the number

Chapter 13 attorney fees are paid through your plan and must be approved by the court. So that every lawyer doesn’t have to file detailed time records in routine cases, each Florida district has entered an order setting a fee the court will presume is reasonable.

These are public court orders. Here is what they currently say:

Florida district	Presumptively reasonable Chapter 13 fee
Middle District — Tampa and Fort Myers divisions	$5,000, plus up to $50/month monitoring fee after confirmation
Northern District — Tallahassee, Pensacola, Gainesville, Panama City	$5,000
Southern District — Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach	$4,500 base, plus the filing fee and up to $150 in expenses

These provisions are set by division as well as by district. If your case will be filed in the Orlando or Jacksonville division, ask us for the figure that applies there rather than assuming the Tampa number carries over.

In the Middle District, specific extra work carries its own published amounts:

Additional service	Fee
Mortgage Modification Mediation	$1,800 (up to $2,500 for complex mediations)
Student Loan Management Program	$1,500, plus up to $250/year for repayment plan recertification
Extraordinary services, including adversary proceedings	By separate application, with time records

Four things worth understanding about these numbers:

They are ceilings, not price tags. The Middle District’s order says plainly that setting a presumptive fee does not mean an attorney can’t charge less — and the court explicitly urges attorneys to charge less in cases requiring less work. If someone quotes you the maximum for a simple case, you are allowed to ask why.

They cover the whole case, not just the filing. The fee is conditioned on handling all bankruptcy-related matters through successful confirmation and completion. You are paying for someone to still be there in month 40.

Court costs are charged separately, and legitimately. The filing fee, your credit report, and the two class fees sit on top of the attorney fee. That’s expressly permitted.

If your case is dismissed early, the fee can be examined. The Middle District’s order requires that any dismissal or conversion order notify you of your right to ask the court to review what your attorney was paid and to order part of it refunded. That protection exists specifically for you.

The structural rule that explains a lot — and the exception we built

At most firms, Chapter 7 attorney fees must be paid in full before the case is filed. That isn’t greed. A fee still owed at the moment of filing gets erased along with every other debt, so it can’t be collected afterward.

Chapter 13 fees mostly ride inside the plan. Which is why, at a traditional firm, someone with a foreclosure sale in three weeks and $200 in the bank can often start a Chapter 13 and cannot start a Chapter 7.

We took that problem off the table. Qualifying clients file a Chapter 7 with nothing down, under a bifurcated fee structure that the bankruptcy court reviewed and approved. The full explanation, including the court’s conditions, is here.

Which matters more than it sounds. If money isn’t what decides which chapter you can start, then nothing should decide it except which chapter actually solves your problem.

The law behind this: 11 U.S.C. § 329 and Fed. R. Bankr. P. 2016(b) (mandatory disclosure of compensation); 11 U.S.C. § 330 (court review of fees); 11 U.S.C. § 1326(b)(1) (attorney fees as an administrative expense paid through the plan); Lamie v. United States Trustee, 540 U.S. 526 (2004) (Chapter 7 debtor’s counsel cannot be compensated from the estate, which is why Chapter 7 fees are ordinarily collected pre-petition); Amended Order Establishing Presumptively Reasonable Debtor’s Attorney’s Fees in Chapter 13 Cases for the Tampa and Fort Myers Divisions, No. 8:07-mp-00002-CED (Bankr. M.D. Fla. Aug. 11, 2023) (Doc. 42); Bankr. N.D. Fla. Administrative Order 23-006 and Amended Standing Order No. 19; Bankr. S.D. Fla. Local Rule 2016-1(B)(2)(a) and the court’s Guidelines for Compensation for Professional Services by Attorneys for Chapter 13 Debtors. District fee provisions are amended from time to time by administrative order — verify the current figure for your district and division.

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Part 4: If you can’t afford it

Short answer: There are five real paths, and most people who think they can’t afford to file actually can.

Path 1: Get the Chapter 7 filing fee waived entirely

If your household income is below 150% of the federal poverty guidelines and you can’t pay even in installments, the court can waive the $338 fee completely. You file a short form with your case.

150% of the federal poverty guidelines — 2026, for Florida:

Household size	Annual	Monthly
1	$23,940	$1,995
2	$32,460	$2,705
3	$40,980	$3,415
4	$49,500	$4,125
5	$58,020	$4,835
6	$66,540	$5,545
7	$75,060	$6,255
8	$83,580	$6,965
Each additional person	add $8,520	add $710

Look at those numbers honestly. A single person earning under about $23,940, or a family of four under $49,500, may not owe the court anything at all. A great many people who have been putting this off for years are sitting inside this table and don’t know it.

The waiver is discretionary rather than automatic, but for someone genuinely inside these figures it is routinely granted.

Path 2: Pay the court in installments

Don’t qualify for a waiver? You can ask to pay the filing fee in up to four installments over 120 days. Your case gets filed — and the automatic stay protects you immediately — while you’re still paying.

Path 3: File your Chapter 7 with nothing down

For clients who qualify, we don’t collect attorney’s fees before we file. No retainer, no deposit. That removes the largest single barrier for most people, and it’s the reason the “I can’t afford it” conversation usually ends differently than the caller expects. How it works.

Path 4: File Chapter 13, where the fee rides in the plan

If Chapter 13 is the right chapter for you — because you’re saving a house, catching up a car, or you’re above the median — its fees are paid through your monthly plan payment rather than upfront. If a foreclosure sale is three weeks out and you have nothing saved, do not assume you can’t afford to protect your house. Call and ask.

Path 5: Ask about the class fee waivers

Both required agencies must waive or reduce fees for low-income filers. It’s a legal obligation, not a courtesy.

And if a deadline is running, say so on the first call

A foreclosure sale, a garnishment starting, a repossession — a deadline changes the strategy entirely. It’s the single most useful thing you can tell us in the first sixty seconds.

The law behind this: 28 U.S.C. § 1930(f)(1) (waiver of the Chapter 7 filing fee for a debtor with income less than 150% of the official poverty line who is unable to pay in installments); Official Form 103B (Application to Have the Chapter 7 Filing Fee Waived); Fed. R. Bankr. P. 1006(b) and Official Form 103A (application to pay the filing fee in installments; no more than four, final installment no later than 120 days after filing); Judicial Conference of the United States, 150% of the HHS Poverty Guidelines (the table courts apply to fee waiver applications); 28 C.F.R. §§ 58.14, 58.24 (agency fee waiver obligations); 11 U.S.C. § 1326(b)(1).

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Part 5: What “$0 down” actually means — including ours

Short answer: it can mean four very different things. Three of them are fine. One can cost you more. Here’s how to tell which you’re being offered — and we’ll apply the test to ourselves at the end.

You’ll see “$0 down” advertising, including on this website. It isn’t automatically a trick — but it is never actually free, and you should know which version you’re getting.

Version 1 — A Chapter 13 where fees ride in the plan. Completely legitimate and often exactly right. This is how Chapter 13 is designed to work, and it’s why Chapter 13 rescues houses for people with empty bank accounts. Fair question to ask: “Is Chapter 13 right for my situation, or is it just the chapter that lets me start today?” Those are different questions, and the honest answer sometimes differs.

Version 2 — A bifurcated Chapter 7 fee agreement. Two agreements: one covering the work to get your case filed, a second signed after filing covering the rest. Because the second is signed post-petition, that fee survives the discharge and can be paid over time. Florida’s bankruptcy courts have approved this structure subject to detailed conditions — separate written disclosures, both agreements shown to you at the same time, a 14-day right to cancel, and full disclosure to the court. Fair questions to ask: “Show me both agreements now, not later. What exactly is in each one? What is the total?”

Version 3 — Third-party financing. Some firms partner with a lender who fronts the fee, and you repay with interest. Legal, and sometimes a reasonable trade, but the interest is real and the court will scrutinize the firm’s relationship with the lender. Fair questions to ask: “What’s the interest rate? What’s the total I’ll repay? Is this a loan from a third party, and what happens if I miss a payment? What does the firm get paid by the lender?” Get it in writing.

Version 4 — An unbundled fee. The headline number is low because it covers less, and the pieces that matter get billed separately. This is the one that can cost you more than a straightforward flat fee. Fair question to ask: “What is not included in this quote?”

The one question that cuts through all of it: “What is the total amount I will pay you, and the total I will pay anyone else, from today until my case is discharged?” Any honest firm can answer that in one sentence.

So here’s our answer

We’re Version 2. Qualifying Chapter 7 clients pay nothing toward attorney’s fees before filing, under a bifurcated agreement. We are not Version 3 — no outside lender is involved, nobody buys your account, and no financing company’s margin is built into your fee. You’ll see both agreements at the same time, you’ll get the 14-day cancellation right, and every dollar is disclosed to the court on the public record.

The whole structure, and the court decisions behind it, are explained here.

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Part 6: What it costs to not file

Short answer: almost nobody does this arithmetic, and it’s usually the arithmetic that matters most.

We are not trying to sell you a bankruptcy. Sometimes the right answer is no bankruptcy at all. But “I can’t afford to file” deserves an honest comparison, because doing nothing has a price too.

A wage garnishment on an ordinary judgment can take up to 25% of your disposable earnings, every payday, indefinitely — until the judgment plus interest is fully paid. On a $28,000 judgment, that is years. Compare it to $338 plus a flat fee, once.

Judgments in Florida accrue interest at a statutory rate, and Florida judgments last a long time — 20 years, and the lien on real property can be re-recorded. A judgment you ignore today can surface when you sell a house in 2040.

Interest and fees keep compounding. A $9,000 credit card balance at 27% that you can only make minimum payments on isn’t shrinking in any meaningful sense.

Bank accounts get levied without warning. Rent money, gone Tuesday morning.

And if the alternative you are weighing is a consolidation loan or a settlement program rather than doing nothing, that comparison has its own arithmetic — including a tax bill most people never hear about. Bankruptcy or debt consolidation?

And there’s a cost that doesn’t show up in dollars. The 2 a.m. arithmetic. The unopened mail. The way it follows you into every conversation with your spouse. Clients tell us, more often than anything else, that what they got back wasn’t money — it was sleep.

One important Florida note: sometimes the answer genuinely is not bankruptcy. Florida’s head of family exemption protects 100% of your wages up to $750 per week from garnishment for ordinary debts, if you provide more than half the support for a dependent and haven’t waived it in writing. A garnishment can sometimes be stopped by a filing in the collection case, with no bankruptcy at all. That consultation is still free. Ask.

The law behind this: 15 U.S.C. § 1673 (federal garnishment ceiling — the lesser of 25% of disposable earnings or the amount exceeding 30 times the federal minimum hourly wage); Fla. Stat. § 222.11 (head of family wage exemption; 100% of disposable earnings up to $750 per week, absent written waiver); Fla. Stat. § 55.03 (statutory interest rate on judgments, set by the Chief Financial Officer); Fla. Stat. § 55.10 (judgment liens on real property, and re-recording); Fla. Stat. § 95.11(1) (20-year limitations period on actions to enforce a judgment); 11 U.S.C. § 362(a) (the automatic stay, which ends all of the above on the day of filing).

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Part 7: What can make a case cost more

Being straightforward about this, because surprises about money damage trust:

• A business, self-employment, or 1099 income — more schedules, more scrutiny, more work
• Real estate beyond your homestead — rentals, timeshares, inherited property, land
• Recent transfers of money or property — has to be analyzed and explained
• A creditor challenging a debt as fraudulent, which becomes separate litigation
• A student loan discharge case — a separate lawsuit inside your bankruptcy
• Mortgage modification mediation — extra work, and Florida’s courts set separate fees for it
• Motions for relief from stay you want to fight
• Prior dismissed cases requiring motions to impose or extend the automatic stay
• Lien avoidance motions to strip judgment liens off exempt property — often well worth the cost
• Amending schedules after filing

None of these should be a surprise. Most are visible at the consultation, and we’ll tell you upfront if your case has one.

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Part 8: Questions to ask any Florida bankruptcy attorney about fees

Ask us these. Ask everyone these. Compare the answers.

1. What is your total flat fee, and what does it cover? Get it in writing.
2. What is not covered? Name the excluded items.
3. What will I pay besides your fee? Filing fee, classes, credit report — get the total.
4. In Chapter 13, are you charging the presumptively reasonable fee for my district, and does my case actually require it? The Middle District’s own order urges attorneys to charge less in simpler cases.
5. Do I qualify for a filing fee waiver or installments? If they haven’t checked your income against the poverty table, they haven’t looked.
6. If it’s “$0 down,” what is the actual mechanism? Plan payment, bifurcated agreement, third-party loan, or unbundled scope?
7. Who will handle my case — you, or someone I haven’t met?
8. In a Chapter 13, who answers the phone in month 30 if I lose my job? This is the most important question on the list and almost nobody asks it. Chapter 13 cases fail when attorneys disengage.
9. Am I sure I need to file at all? A lawyer willing to talk you out of a case is worth more than one who isn’t.

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Talk to us

The consultation is free, and there is no obligation. We’ll tell you the total cost in writing, whether you qualify for a fee waiver, which chapter fits, and whether you need to file at all.

If cost is the reason you have waited, that’s exactly the thing to bring up on the first call. Between fee waivers, installments, our nothing-down Chapter 7, and Chapter 13’s structure, there is almost always a path. And if there truly isn’t one right now, we’ll tell you that honestly and point you to the legal aid organizations serving your county.

If a foreclosure sale, garnishment, or repossession is coming, call today rather than next week. Deadlines change which options exist.

Debt Relief Legal Group — (813) 231-2088 — aborden@1800debtrelief.com — 14502 N Dale Mabry Hwy Ste 200, Office 304-5, Tampa, FL 33618

Serving consumer bankruptcy clients throughout Florida.

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About this article

Written by Alan Dexter Borden, a Florida consumer bankruptcy attorney with 17 years of experience in Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 cases, student loan discharge, adversary proceedings, and consumer protection litigation under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and the Florida Consumer Collection Practices Act.

Last reviewed: 29 July 2026

Fees listed are averages and can be dramatically different based on your unique case. Our free consultation will provide what fees your case would actually cost with our firm.

This article is general information about Florida and federal bankruptcy law, not legal advice about your situation, and it is not a fee quote. Every case is different.

Several figures on this page change on separate schedules. Court filing fees are set by the Judicial Conference and change periodically. The federal poverty guidelines are updated by HHS every January; the figures here are the 2026 amounts. Chapter 13 presumptively reasonable fees are set by administrative order in each Florida district and are amended from time to time — the amounts here reflect the orders in effect as of the review date above. Always verify current figures before relying on them.

Reading this article does not create an attorney-client relationship.