• debts you forget to list in your bankruptcy papers, unless the creditor learns of your bankruptcy case
• debts for personal injury or death caused by your intoxicated driving
• fines and penalties imposed for violating the law, such as traffic tickets and criminal restitution, and
• recent income tax debts and all other tax debts.

In addition, some types of debts may not be discharged if the creditor convinces the judge that they should survive your bankruptcy. These include debts incurred through fraud, such as lying on a credit application or passing off borrowed property as your own to use as collateral for a loan.

What Only Chapter 13 Bankruptcy Can Do

Chapter 7 can't help you with these situations, but Chapter 13 can:

Stop a mortgage foreclosure. Though bankruptcy can delay a foreclosure, a Chapter 7 bankruptcy won't stop it for long. Chapter 13, however, was designed with foreclosure problems in mind. A typical foreclosure scenario is where, because payments have been missed, the lender demands immediate payment of a huge sum of money -- perhaps the entire loan amount -- and there is no way you can come up with it. Filing for Chapter 13 bankruptcy will stop the foreclosure and can force the lender to accept a plan where you make up the missed payments and the loan amount through monthly payments over the next three to five years. To make this plan work, you must be able to demonstrate that you will have enough income in the future to support such a repayment plan.

Another way bankruptcy can help with mortgage problems is to free you of other debts so you will have more disposable income available to stay current on your mortgage.

Allow you to keep nonexempt property. In Chapter 7, you must give up your valuable nonexempt property so that the trustee can sell it and use the proceeds to pay off your creditors. If you have nonexempt property that you really want to keep, and a steady source of income, Chapter 13 might make more sense. You don't have to give up any property in Chapter 13 because you use your income to fund your repayment plan.