The Automatic Stay in Bankruptcy: What It Protects and What Counts as a Violation.

The automatic stay is a federal protection under 11 U.S.C. § 362 that takes effect the moment you file for bankruptcy and stops most creditors from collecting a pre-filing debt: no calls demanding payment, lawsuits, garnishments, foreclosures or repossessions. Any covered collection act after filing can be a violation, and a willful one can cost the creditor your actual damages and attorney fees.

If a collector still calls after you filed, you are living in the gap between that rule and what actually happens. The stay also stops at the courtroom door. It says nothing about what the credit bureaus print on your reports.

What does the automatic stay in bankruptcy stop?

The automatic stay is a federal order that takes effect when you file for bankruptcy under 11 U.S.C. § 362. It stops most creditors from collecting a pre-bankruptcy debt, enforcing a judgment or taking property tied to your case. Cornell’s Legal Information Institute describes it as a statutory injunction that immediately halts most creditor collection activity, with a purpose of giving you breathing room while the court supervises your case (Cornell Legal Information Institute, 2025).

Section 362(a) reaches every one of these acts:

• Lawsuits: starting or continuing any action against you over a pre-filing claim.
• Judgments: enforcing a pre-filing judgment against you or your estate property.
• Property: any act to take possession of, or control, estate property.
• Liens: creating, perfecting or enforcing a lien against estate property or a lien securing a pre-filing claim.
• Collection: any act to collect, assess or recover a pre-filing claim, plus setoff of a pre-filing debt.

What counts as a violation of the automatic stay?

A creditor cannot start or continue a lawsuit, evict you, ask you for repayment in any way, garnish your wages or repossess your property while the stay is in effect, according to the Eastern District of New York bankruptcy court’s creditor guidance (U.S. Bankruptcy Court, E.D.N.Y., 2026). The Northern District of Georgia’s bankruptcy court lists the same acts and adds that any action to collect money or obtain property from you is barred (U.S. Bankruptcy Court, N.D. Ga., 2026).

Official Form B9A, the notice courts send creditors, names the same common acts: phone, mail or other contact demanding repayment, repossession, lawsuits, foreclosures and wage garnishment (U.S. Courts, 12/12 edition).

Some cases turn on the facts. In Citizens Bank of Maryland v. Strumpf, the Supreme Court held that a bank’s temporary administrative hold on a debtor’s account, placed while it asks the court for relief under § 362(d), is not a setoff and does not violate the stay (Supreme Court, 1995). The bank had refused to pay “not permanently and absolutely, but only while it sought relief under § 362(d).”

What does the automatic stay not stop?

The stay is broad but not absolute. Section 362(b) lets certain criminal cases continue, family-law matters such as custody and support orders, and police and regulatory actions by government agencies. Certain evictions are excepted too, and a creditor may act within a court order lifting the stay (U.S. House Office of the Law Revision Counsel, 2026).

• Criminal cases: a petition does not stay a criminal action against you.
• Family law: paternity, support orders, custody, visitation, domestic violence matters and divorce proceedings go on, except where a divorce seeks to divide estate property. Income withholding for support, interception of tax refunds and reporting overdue support to a consumer reporting agency also go on.
• Government action: a governmental unit can enforce its police and regulatory power.
• Evictions: if your landlord won a judgment for possession before you filed, § 362(b)(22) lets the eviction continue. You can delay it by filing and serving a certification under penalty of perjury that state law lets you cure the whole default, and then the exception starts 30 days after filing. If you list the judgment on your petition and file no certification, the exception applies at once and the landlord needs no relief from the court. Under § 362(b)(23), an eviction for endangering the property or illegal drug use also continues when the landlord files a certification.
• Court orders: a creditor can act inside an order granting relief from the stay.

What can you recover if a creditor willfully violates the automatic stay?

Under § 362(k), an individual debtor injured by a willful violation recovers actual damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, and punitive damages in appropriate circumstances (U.S. Bankruptcy Court, E.D.N.Y., In re Henderson, 2026). The stay applies from the moment you file, whether or not the creditor has been told.

The court defines “willful” as any deliberate act taken in violation of the stay, which the creditor knows to be in existence. It requires no specific intent to break the law, only a general intent to take the act. A violation made without notice of your case is a technical one, and an inadvertent violator owes nothing. But once a creditor has actual notice, it has a duty to stop, and failing to undo a technical violation can make it willful. In Henderson, the creditor’s lack of notice before the sale did not matter, because it left the violation in place for about five years after learning of it.

What should you do if a creditor violates the automatic stay?

Tell the creditor in writing that you filed, and give it your case number and filing date. If it keeps collecting, the court is where you get an order, and a bankruptcy attorney is who brings it. The District of Oregon’s bankruptcy court publishes this procedure (U.S. Bankruptcy Court, D. Or.):

1. Immediately notify the creditor in writing that you have filed bankruptcy.
2. Provide the creditor either the case number and filing date, or a copy of the petition showing it was filed.
3. If the creditor still continues to try to collect, the debtor may be entitled to take legal action against the creditor to obtain a specific order from the court prohibiting further collection action.
4. If the creditor is willfully violating the automatic stay, the court can award the debtor actual damages (including costs and attorney fees) and, in appropriate circumstances, punitive damages.
5. Any such legal action is complex and will normally require representation by a qualified bankruptcy attorney.

What can you dispute on your credit report after filing bankruptcy?

The stay is enforced in bankruptcy court and does not change what the credit bureaus report. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, you can dispute any item that is inaccurate, incomplete, unverifiable or too old to be reported, including a debt reported wrongly after it was included in your case. Each dispute goes to the bureau reporting the item.

The FCRA (1970) gives you a free report from each bureau, the right to dispute, and the right to have unverifiable items corrected or deleted. The FTC’s summary of those rights says the bureau must investigate unless the dispute is frivolous, and that inaccurate, incomplete or unverifiable information must be corrected or deleted, usually within 30 days (FTC, 2026). Common errors after a filing include the following, and each one is independently disputable:

• Discharged debts still showing a balance.
• Accounts marked delinquent after the filing date.
• Collectors reporting a discharged debt as an active collection.
• The bankruptcy entry itself, when it shows the wrong chapter, a dismissed case as discharged, or a wrong filing date, which drives how long it stays.

Accurate, current, verifiable information stays on the report, and that includes the bankruptcy. The CFPB states that a bankruptcy remains on a credit report up to 10 years from the date of entry of the order or adjudication, with certain instances allowing reporting beyond 10 years (CFPB, 2024). A stay violation is a different problem, and your bankruptcy attorney handles it.

The stay stops collectors, and your credit report is a separate job

Collectors answer to the bankruptcy court. If one keeps collecting on a covered debt after it knows you filed, the court is where you press for damages and fees. The bureaus answer to the FCRA, and what they print about your bankruptcy and the accounts in it goes through a dispute, one item at a time. Each problem goes to the place built to hear it, and the credit report is the one the stay does not touch.

Which credit dispute tools fit a person who has filed for bankruptcy?

A stay violation goes to your bankruptcy attorney and the court, but a wrong item on your credit reports needs a bureau dispute. The tools below differ on price, how many bureaus they reach and who writes and sends the letters. Each company’s published terms sit side by side.

Every price is that company’s own published rate, read off that company’s own site on September 15, 2026. Trustpilot scores and review counts as published on October 5, 2026.

If you already paid a tool and watched nothing happen, the reviewers of these tools say where it broke down. Of Lexington Law’s 134 most recent one- and two-star Trustpilot reviews, within its latest 200, 79 say they paid for months and nothing changed. Of Dispute Beast’s 33 most recent one- and two-star reviews, within its latest 200, 21 say the same.

Credit Karma carries a 1.1 on Trustpilot. Namaste O. gave it one star on July 8, 2026, writing: “I got a notification saying they linked my husband’s car loan in with my credit. Nothing my husband or I wanted or would have approved. No trust left for credit karma.”

How CreditRefresh drafts FCRA disputes for all three bureaus in three steps

The stay protects you from collectors, but your reports still need checking, and that is the part we do. We read your credit reports, find items that look inaccurate, incomplete, unverifiable or too old to be reported, and draft a ready-to-send FCRA dispute letter for each one, for Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. It takes three steps from scan to mailing, with nothing to learn. Members rate us 4.6 across 22 Trustpilot reviews. Rory D. gave us five stars on Trustpilot on September 20, 2026: “Found errors that I was unaware of in a very short time”.

CreditRefresh is included with Refresh Monitoring at $49.99 a month, with no setup fee, no per-dispute charge and no contract, and you can cancel anytime. You mail the letters yourself, or pay a small per-letter fee for RushMail to do it. You review and sign every letter before it goes out. Our 100% money-back guarantee covers members who work the full program and see no bureau score rise above where they started: they can claim back every Refresh Monitoring payment. Conditions are at creditrefresh.ai/guarantee.

We are not a law firm and give no legal advice, so a stay violation belongs with your bankruptcy attorney. We promise no score outcome, and results vary and are not guaranteed.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does the automatic stay last?

Under 11 U.S.C. § 362(c)(2), the stay on acts other than acts against estate property lasts until the earliest of three events: your case is closed, your case is dismissed, or a discharge is granted or denied in an individual Chapter 7 case or a Chapter 9, 11, 12 or 13 case. A court can also grant relief earlier on a creditor’s request after notice and a hearing.

Can a creditor ask the court to lift the automatic stay?

Yes. Under § 362(d), the court can grant relief after notice and a hearing for cause, including lack of adequate protection of an interest in property, or where you have no equity in property that is not needed for reorganization. Two further grounds cover certain single asset real estate cases and schemes to delay or defraud creditors involving real property. A creditor asks by motion under Federal Rule of Bankruptcy Procedure 4001(a), and filing the motion is generally permitted, while acting on the property waits for the court’s order.

What happens to the stay if you file a second bankruptcy within a year?

Under § 362(c)(3), if your earlier case was dismissed within the past year, the stay on debts and property ends on the 30th day after you refile. The court can extend it, but only after a hearing completed before those 30 days run out and only on a showing that the new filing is in good faith. Under § 362(c)(4), if two or more of your cases were dismissed in the past year, no stay takes effect on refiling, and a party in interest can ask within 30 days for the court to order it into effect.

What happens to a co-signer when you file for bankruptcy?

In a Chapter 13 case, 11 U.S.C. § 1301(a) bars a creditor from collecting a consumer debt from anyone who is liable on it with you or who secured it. That protection does not apply if the co-signer became liable on or secured the debt in the ordinary course of the co-signer’s own business, and it ends if the case is closed, dismissed or converted to Chapter 7 or 11. On request, the court must lift it to the extent the co-signer received the consideration for the claim, your plan does not propose to pay the claim, or the creditor’s interest would be irreparably harmed.

How long does a bankruptcy stay on your credit report?

The CFPB states that a Chapter 7, 11, 12 or 13 bankruptcy stays on a credit report up to 10 years from the date of entry of the order for relief or adjudication, with certain instances allowing reporting beyond 10 years (CFPB, 2024). Under 15 U.S.C. § 1681c(a)(1), a case under title 11 may not appear in a consumer report if it antedates the report by more than 10 years (FTC, 2026). A bankruptcy still showing past its window is disputable on age alone.

CreditRefresh reads all three of your credit reports after you file and drafts an FCRA dispute for each item that looks inaccurate, incomplete, unverifiable or too old, while you review and sign every letter before it is sent. Backed by a 100% money-back guarantee.

Start here: check your reports after your bankruptcy filing →