Bankruptcies keep rising

U.S. personal and commercial bankruptcy filings may reach 1.5 million this year, and Highlands County seems to be following suit.

In the past three months alone, 69 Highlands County residents have gone broke, according to records from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida.

In 2008, 141 couples, individuals and businesses declared bankruptcy in Highlands County. That was 40 percent more than the previous year.

"It's going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better," bankruptcy attorney Gary Gossett predicted in April, and it turns out he was right.

So far this year, 118 bankruptcies were filed from Highlands County.

Bankruptcies dipped in 2005 after Congress passed a reform measure to prevent bankruptcy abuse and make it harder to erase credit card debt.

The 2009 number is well below the 2005 record of 2 million filings, but the recession is pushing up the numbers again, according to an Automated Access to Court Electronic Records report in USA Today. The American unemployment rate - as well as Highlands County - is nearing 10 percent; Florida crossed that line in May.

Experts are blaming tight credit, 401(k) and IRA accounts cut in half by a plummeting stock market, smaller paychecks, and even the tinier savings accounts most working Americans have.

Even credit cards aren't helping: J.P. Morgan and Chase Bank Card Services began notifying customers that in August, their minimum monthly payments would jump from 2 percent to 5 percent of their balance.

And in this recession, small businesses - the mainstay of American economy - may not help either: commercial and small business bankruptcies have surged 240 percent so far this year, according to USA Today, which quoted Automated Access to Electronic Records.