Legal-Source Methodology

Which sources does Bankruptcy.law treat as authoritative?

Only bodies with the authority to publish the rule in question. Federal law comes from the Office of the Law Revision Counsel for Title 11 and Title 28, and from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts for the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure, the Official Forms and the fee schedule the Judicial Conference sets. Case-specific dollar thresholds come from the U.S. Trustee Program, which publishes the census median income figures and the IRS expense standards the means test uses. District practice comes from each bankruptcy court's own local rules and standing orders. State exemptions come from the state code itself, not from a secondary summary of it. Nothing is sourced from another law firm's website, a content aggregator, or a second-hand summary of the law.

What is actually stored behind a page?

Two things, and the distinction matters. The first is the law itself: the official text of the statutes, court rules, forms and standing orders that decide consumer bankruptcy cases, held in full rather than as a summary, so a quotation on this site can be checked against its own context. Over 20,000 current documents are held this way across 52 jurisdictions, each with the citation and the link to the page that publishes it. The second is the set of figures derived from that text — exemption amounts, median income tables, filing fees, deadlines, local practice — each stored as a record carrying its citation, the jurisdiction it belongs to and the dates it applies between. Pages read from those records rather than keeping their own copy of a number, which is why a figure and its authority cannot drift apart.

• Superseded versions are retained rather than overwritten, so a change in the law can be seen rather than assumed.
• Because a page records the figures it used, a change at the source can be traced to every page carrying the old value.

How does a legal figure get onto the site?

Through review by a person, not an import. Collection of source text never publishes a figure by itself. A structured value — an exemption amount, a filing deadline, a district's practice — is first written up with the value, its citation, the source it came from and the exact text supporting it. A named reviewer approves or rejects it, and only an approved figure with a source document behind it can be published. Approval is recorded with a name and a date; no automated step can grant it, and no figure reaches the site by a direct edit or a bulk import. That is the slowest part of the process and the reason the numbers on this site can be relied on.

• A figure with no source document attached cannot be published, regardless of who approves it.
• Rejected and revised entries stay in the record, so the history of a figure remains readable rather than being overwritten.

What happens when a source cannot be verified?

The value is left out and the gap is stated. This is the rule that shapes the site most, because it costs coverage. Where a state's rules on a topic have not been verified into the record, the pages that would use them say nothing rather than repeating a secondary summary. Of 3,143 counties, 2,826 are mapped to the specific court division that hears their cases, each mapping carrying the court's own citation and source link; the remainder have no binding published rule assigning them, so those pages show district-level information rather than a division chosen by inference. Coverage of state exemption figures is being built out state by state and each page says what it has. An absent figure is recoverable; a confidently wrong one is not.

• Around five states publish their code only through a search container with no stable deep link. One code-portal address is registered for those rather than a fabricated section URL.
• State court opinions are deliberately outside the corpus. The site works from statutes, rules, forms and official publications, and does not characterise case law.

How are competing or time-limited amounts handled?

By keeping them all and selecting on the facts, rather than picking one. Legal figures change on dates, and two versions of the same rule frequently apply at once — one to cases filed before a date and one to cases filed after. Both are stored with their own effective window and the one that governs is chosen by filing date, so replacing a figure never quietly deletes the version still controlling older cases. A second case is harder: several states publish more than one current amount for the same category, where which applies turns on a fact about the filer, such as age or disability. Here the site does not choose. It presents the published alternatives and asks the question that separates them, because silently resolving to the largest — or to the first one found — would state a number the statute does not give that person.

• Superseding a value only replaces the version sharing its effective date, never a version governing a different window.
• Where several current amounts compete, none is treated as the default.

Where does the source corpus end?

At published primary law. The corpus covers statutes, court rules, official forms, standing orders, fee schedules and official agency publications — the material that states the rule. It does not include court opinions, so the site reports what a provision says rather than characterising how courts have applied it. Coverage by state is uneven at this stage and each page says so rather than smoothing it over: exemption data is published for 8 states so far, and the state foreclosure and judgment tables are still being built. Dates follow the same principle. A figure's verification date records when the value was last confirmed against its source, which is a different claim from when the law took effect — and since only 4,328 of 20,793 current documents publish an effective date, that distinction is stated rather than papered over.

• Effective dates are never backfilled to make a page look more precise than the source is.
• Questions that turn on how a court has interpreted a provision are the ones worth taking to a bankruptcy attorney.

Frequently asked questions

Can I check a figure on Bankruptcy.law against the original source myself?

Yes, and that is the intended use. Every published figure is stored with the citation it came from and a link to the official page that publishes it, and both are shown alongside the number rather than kept in a back office. On the statute pages the official text is reproduced in full with a link to the publisher's own copy, so a claim can be read against the source in the same sitting.

Why does one state show more detail than another?

Because verified coverage is uneven and the site does not fill gaps with estimates. Published exemption data currently covers 8 states, and the state rule tables for foreclosure and judgment procedure are still empty. A state without published data shows the federal and court-level information that is verified for it and says nothing about the rest, rather than presenting a plausible figure with no source behind it.

What stops a figure on this site from drifting away from its source?

Every figure is stored as a record with its citation, its jurisdiction and its effective window, and pages read from that record rather than carrying their own copy of a number. A page cannot be saved if a figure in its text disagrees with the stored value. So a figure and its authority move together, and when a source changes, the pages carrying the old value can be listed rather than hunted for.

Does the site rely on court opinions or case law?

No. The corpus is statutes, court rules, official forms, standing orders, fee schedules and official agency publications. State case law is excluded, so the site does not characterise how courts have interpreted a provision. Questions that turn on interpretation rather than published text are the kind that belong with a bankruptcy attorney, and the site routes them there rather than answering them.

How often are the sources re-checked?

Each registered source carries its own re-check cadence — weekly for fast-moving federal publications such as the Code, the rules and the forms, monthly for district and most state sources. The automated monitor that performs those checks, compares the new copy against the stored one and opens a review task on a real change is built and is being brought into service. Until it reports, the verification date shown with a figure is the date that value was last confirmed against its source by hand.

Sources

• 11 U.S.C. — Title 11 — United States Bankruptcy Code
• 28 U.S.C. §§ 81–131 — Judicial districts and courts
• 28 U.S.C. §§ 1408–1412 — Venue of cases under title 11
• Fed. R. Bankr. P. — Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure
• Official Bankruptcy Forms B101–B430 — Official Bankruptcy Forms
• Bankruptcy Court Miscellaneous Fee Schedule — Judicial Conference of the United States
• UST Means Testing — Census median income and IRS expense standards
• 28 C.F.R. pt. 58 — U.S. Trustee regulations — credit counseling and debtor education

Related

• Read the statutes and rules in full
• Editorial standards
• How updates are handled
• Corrections policy