Inland Northwest bankruptcy filings soared in ‘09

Inland Northwest residents caught between unemployment and decreasing home prices filed bankruptcy last year in numbers not seen since the law was overhauled in 2005. Filings in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for Eastern Washington jumped 31 percent, to 7,234. The increase closely tracked the 32 percent increase in bankruptcy filings reported Monday for the nation as a whole. In North Idaho courthouses, bankruptcy filings soared by 56 percent, to 1,441. That’s a more than four-fold increase since 2006, when changes in the bankruptcy code drastically reduced filings.