Ohio has been hit hard by the recession over the past several years, making it difficult for people to live comfortably without credit debt or without living paycheck to paycheck. A good indication of how well an area is doing can be the number of bankruptcy filings each month or year.
When you're in a situation where you can't pay your bills or are struggling with overwhelming credit card debt, then bankruptcy is always an option. Fortunately for northwest Ohio, that option is being used less frequently now that jobs and the economy seem to be improving in the area.
According to the article out of Toledo, Ohio, from the beginning of April 2015, there were only 454 bankruptcy cases filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Toledo in March. While that may seem like a high number of bankruptcies for the area, this is a massive improvement from 2014, when 527 cases were filed during the same time period.
What kind of bankruptcy seems to be the most common? Consumer-based bankruptcies tend to be, and in March, 415 of the filings were Chapter 7 liquidation bankruptcies. That number is a drop of 14 percent compared to March in 2014, though. Chapter 13 cases were filed 34 times. These are filed when individuals want to create a repayment plan. Business-based bankruptcies were also filed five times under Chapter 11.
So, is it just March, or has the area improved a great deal overall? The news reports that 2015 has shown promise, with filings down by 9 percent when compared to the same beginning three months in 2014.
Source: The Toledo Blade, "Bankruptcy filings down in northwest Ohio," April. 02, 2015