Reference

Chapter 13 Glossary

Plain-English explanations of the terms, codes, and abbreviations you'll encounter in your NDC files and throughout your case.

Written by debtors who looked all of this up the hard way.

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The Basics People and Roles Claims and Creditor Types NDC and Your CSV Files Money and Payments

The Basics

Chapter 13: The section of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code that lets you keep your assets and repay your debts over three to five years through a structured plan. Sometimes called a "wage earner's plan" because you need regular income to qualify. The alternative, Chapter 7, is a liquidation — you give up non-exempt assets in exchange for a faster discharge. Chapter 13 is harder and longer, but it lets you keep your house.
The Plan: Your repayment agreement, filed with the bankruptcy court. It spells out how much you'll pay each month, for how long, and which creditors get what. Once the court approves it (that's called confirmation), you're legally bound to it — but so are your creditors.
Confirmation: When the bankruptcy court officially approves your plan. Until confirmation, your plan is a proposal. After confirmation, it's binding. This can take weeks or months after you file. Some things in your case work differently before and after confirmation.
Discharge: The legal end of your case. Once you've completed all your plan payments, the court issues a discharge order that eliminates your remaining eligible debts. This is the finish line. Not all debts are dischargeable — student loans and recent taxes, for example, typically survive.
Dismissal: The opposite of discharge. If you miss too many payments or fall out of compliance, your case can be dismissed — meaning it's thrown out without a discharge. Your debts come back, your protection from creditors ends, and you're back where you started (or worse). This is the bad outcome.
341 Meeting (Meeting of Creditors): A brief meeting, usually held a few weeks after you file, where the trustee asks you questions under oath about your finances. Despite the name, creditors rarely show up. Most people find it much less scary than it sounds. It typically lasts under ten minutes.

People and Roles

Trustee: The court-appointed administrator who manages your case. You send your monthly payments to the trustee, and the trustee distributes that money to your creditors according to your plan. The trustee also monitors your compliance and can move to dismiss your case if you fall behind. They work for the court, not for you — but they're not your adversary either.
Creditor: Anyone you owe money to. Your mortgage company, your car lender, the IRS, your credit card companies — they're all creditors. In Chapter 13, your creditors file claims with the court to get paid through your plan.
Servicer (Mortgage Servicer): The company that actually handles your mortgage payments — often different from the company that originally lent you the money. Servicers change frequently, which is why your mortgage creditor name might change in NDC without the underlying debt changing at all.

Claims and Creditor Types

Claim: A creditor's formal request to be paid through your bankruptcy plan. Creditors file claims with the court, and those claims become the basis for what gets paid and in what order. One creditor can have multiple claims — for example, your mortgage lender might have separate claims for the ongoing payment, the arrears, and any gap payments.
Priority Claim: A claim that must be paid in full before unsecured creditors get anything. Priority creditors include the IRS (back taxes), state tax authorities, domestic support obligations (alimony, child support), and certain other government claims. Your plan has to pay these off completely.
Secured Claim: A debt backed by collateral — something the creditor can repossess or foreclose on if you don't pay. Your mortgage is a secured claim (backed by your house). Your car loan is a secured claim (backed by your car). Secured creditors have more leverage than unsecured ones.
Unsecured Claim: A debt with no collateral behind it — credit cards, medical bills, personal loans. In a Chapter 13 plan, unsecured creditors often receive only a fraction of what they're owed (sometimes pennies on the dollar), and the rest is discharged at the end of your plan.
Continuing Claim / Ongoing Obligation: A debt that continues beyond your plan — like your regular monthly mortgage payment or ongoing car payment. These don't get "paid off" through your plan; instead, your plan keeps you current on them while you also pay off any arrears. When your plan ends, you just keep making those payments directly.
Arrears: The amount you were behind on a debt when you filed. If you were three months behind on your mortgage, that three months' worth is your mortgage arrears. Your Chapter 13 plan pays off the arrears over time while you resume making current payments — that's how it saves your house.

NDC and Your CSV Files

NDC (National Data Center): The company that processes bankruptcy trustee payments for most of the country. When you make your monthly payment to your trustee, NDC tracks it and routes money to your creditors. NDC.org is where you can log in and download your account data as CSV files — which is exactly what this tool analyzes.
Account Ledger: One of the two CSV files you can download from NDC. It's a complete transaction history of your case — every payment you've made, every disbursement to every creditor, every trustee fee. The filename includes the date it was generated. This is the file that tells the story of what's actually happened in your case.
Claim Summary: The other CSV file from NDC. It lists every creditor with a claim in your case, along with the original claim amount, how much has been paid, how much is still owed, and other details. Think of it as a snapshot of where every account stands right now.
Claim Level: A number in your claim summary that controls payment priority within your plan. Lower numbers get paid first. Common levels include: 1–2 (court/admin fees), 31 (priority, like taxes), 41 (secured, like mortgages and car loans), and higher numbers for unsecured debt. You don't need to memorize these — just know that the number determines the order in which creditors get paid.
Claim Type Code: A single letter in your claim summary indicating the nature of the debt:
Continuing Indicator: A field in your claim summary — usually Y or blank — that marks a claim as an ongoing obligation beyond the plan. A "Y" means this debt continues after your plan ends (like your mortgage). These claims don't get a zero balance when you finish your plan; you just keep paying them normally.
COSTED (in a claim description): When you see "COSTED" in a claim description in NDC, it means the claim has been finalized — the trustee has determined the exact amount to be paid and locked it in. It's an NDC processing term, not a legal one. It's usually good news: it means the number is settled and payments are being applied.
Disbursement: A payment from the trustee to one of your creditors. When you make your monthly plan payment, the trustee collects it and then disburses portions of it to each creditor according to your plan. Your account ledger shows every disbursement.
Receipt: A payment from you to the trustee — your monthly plan payment arriving in the system. Your account ledger shows receipts as positive amounts and disbursements as negative amounts.
Pre-Petition: Before your bankruptcy filing date. Pre-petition debts are the ones your Chapter 13 plan is designed to address. "MTG-PRE-PETITION ARREARS" in NDC means the mortgage payments you missed before you filed.
Gap Payments (MTG-GAP PYMTS): Mortgage payments that came due after you filed bankruptcy but before your plan was officially confirmed. There's often a gap of weeks or months between filing and confirmation, and those payments have to be accounted for. Your plan typically includes a separate claim to cover them.

Money and Payments

Trustee Fee: A percentage of every payment you make, taken by the trustee as compensation for administering your case. The percentage is set by Congress and varies over the life of your plan — it's been anywhere from 3% to 10% in recent years depending on Congressional appropriations. It comes out of your monthly payment before anything goes to creditors.
Claim Amount: The amount a creditor says you owe them, as stated in the formal claim they filed with the bankruptcy court. This is the creditor's number, not yours. It controls how much gets paid through your plan. If a creditor files a claim for more than you expected, your attorney can object to it.
Scheduled Amount: The amount you listed for a creditor in your bankruptcy schedules when you originally filed. This is your number — what you believed you owed at the time of filing. If the creditor never files a formal claim, the scheduled amount may be used as a stand-in. When the claim amount and scheduled amount differ, the claim amount typically wins.
Schedules: The official forms you filed with the bankruptcy court when you first filed your case. They list everything you own, everything you owe, your income, and your expenses. The ones most relevant to your Chapter 13 plan are:
Schedule D — your secured debts (mortgage, car loans, anything backed by collateral)
Schedule E/F — your priority and unsecured debts (taxes, credit cards, medical bills)
The amounts you listed on these schedules are what NDC calls the "scheduled amount" for each creditor. They represent your best estimate at the time of filing — creditors may file claims for different amounts later.
Principal Paid / Principal Owed: How much of a claim's original balance has been paid down (principal paid) versus how much remains (principal owed). Interest is tracked separately. When principal owed reaches zero on a non-continuing claim, that creditor is paid off.
Plan Payment: Your fixed monthly payment to the trustee. This amount is set when your plan is confirmed and typically stays the same for the life of the plan, though it can be modified if your circumstances change significantly.

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