“Filings in U.S. Bankruptcy Court here continued to grow during the first half of this year, but at only a 4 percent pace, well below the 44 percent jump in the first six months of 2009 and the 31 percent jump during all of last year. Meanwhile, filings in North Idaho shot up, and bankruptcy attorneys here and in Coeur d’Alene say they aren’t seeing a slowdown in activity.

From January through June of this year, 3,899 bankruptcy petitions were filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court’s Eastern District of Washington, which is based in Spokane, compared with 3,751 filings during the year-earlier period. For all of last year, the district had 7,320 filings, compared with 5,583 in 2008, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

Although filings appear to be on pace to total nearly 8,000 for the year, that number still would be lower than the 11,506 petitions filed in Eastern Washington in 2005 and the 9,376 filed in 2004.

Kevin O’Rourke, an attorney with Southwell & O’Rourke PS, of Spokane, says that firm’s bankruptcy workload has been steady, and he doesn’t expect the number of filings it’s handling to decrease in the near future.

“While there certainly are indicators suggesting that the markets are stabilizing, our clients are telling us otherwise,” O’Rourke says.

He says the firm is seeing an increase in business bankruptcy filings, which he attributes to the economic downturn. “That’s the most common factor that representatives of our corporate clients are telling us is necessitating the filing,” O’Rourke says. 

In the Coeur d’Alene Court of the District of Idaho, filings increased by 25 percent, to 874, in the first six months of this year, compared with 697 filings in the year-earlier period.

Noel Pitner, an attorney in the Coeur d’Alene office of the Spokane law firm Huppin Ewing Anderson & Paul PS,(Ewing Anderson, P.S.) says North Idaho’s economy is based partly on the mining and logging industries, which aren’t recovering as fast as other sectors are. He says he expects the bankruptcy filing pace to remain steady into the first or second quarter of 2011.

Pitner estimates that in North Idaho, 50 percent of people who file for bankruptcy use their tax refunds to pay attorneys’ filing fees, which can run upwards of $1,100 there.

“In Idaho, there’s no way to protect your tax refund. In a bankruptcy case, a trustee has a right to that refund,” Pitner explains. 

Also, he says the number of people filing for bankruptcy doesn’t reflect the number of people in economic difficulty.

“People don’t have money to pay an attorney to do a bankruptcy filing. I think a lot of people are just walking away from their debt—walking away from their house,” he says.

On the state level, Washington passed a similar law that goes into effect July 26, 2009. Specifically, under Law S. 896 (PL 111-22), any residential tenant occupying property at the time the property is foreclosed must be given 60 days written notice before an eviction can occur. During this 60 days, the only reasons landlord could expedite removal of the tenant would include the tenant committing waste to the property or creating a nuisance. See http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?bill=5810&year=2009 for a complete copy of the passed law.

It is still unclear how the state law and the federal law will mesh with each other. Anyone who has questions regarding the details of the federal/state law(s) should contact either an attorney or professional in the real estate field for assistance.