Life in the Sweatbox

Pamela Foohey, Robert M. Lawless, Katherine Porter & Deborah Thorne*

The time before a person files bankruptcy is sometimes called the financial “sweatbox.” Using original data from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, we find that people are living longer in the sweatbox before filing bankruptcy than they have in the past. We also describe the depletion of wealth and well-being that defines people’s time in the sweatbox. For those people who struggle for more than two years before filing bankruptcy—the “long strugglers”—their time in the sweatbox is particularly damaging. During their years in the sweatbox, long strugglers deal with persistent collection calls, go without healthcare, food, and utilities, lose homes and other property, and yet remain ashamed of needing to file. For these people in particular, though time in the sweatbox undermines their ability to realize bankruptcy’s “fresh start,” they do not file until long after the costs outweigh the benefits. This Article’s findings challenge longstanding narratives about who files bankruptcy and why. These narratives underlie our laws, influence how judges rule in individual cases, and affect how attorneys interact with their clients.

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© 2018 Pamela Foohey, Robert M. Lawless, Katherine Porter & Deborah Thorne. Individuals and nonprofit institutions may reproduce and distribute copies of this Article in any format at or below cost, for educational purposes, so long as each copy identifies the authors, provides a citation to the Notre Dame Law Review, and includes this provision in the copyright notice.

*Pamela Foohey is an Associate Professor of Law at Indiana University Bloomington. Robert M. Lawless is the Max L. Rowe Professor of Law at the University of Illinois. Katherine Porter is a Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine. Deborah Thorne is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Idaho. The authors contributed equally and are listed in alphabetical order. The authors would like to thank their research assistants who have contributed to the success of this project. Without their contributions, it would not have been possible to assemble the data that underlie this paper.