answer:The whole point of bankruptcy is that your assets cannot repay the debts you have, so complete debt repayment is not required. The major point that many people miss is that bankruptcy offsets any assets you do have against the debts, so you cannot lose your debts and keep any assets. You release yourself from all debts but also relinquish all your assets ( well, there are some exceptions but not many). For example, your mortgage is $100K less than the value of your property, so you have $100K value in the property. You own $200K. Thus the house is sold and the $100K value is given to your creditors. You do not have to repay the additional $100K, but you have lost your house. Some states allow you to keep the house. I know that is the situation in Florida, I think you do not have this protection in NY. Maybe you should move to Florida before declaring bankruptcy. You didn’t want to go into this, but for other readers it needs to be said… In this current climate, the major problem with bankruptcy is that your credit rating will be ripped up and thrown away for many years. Today people with perfect credit records cannot get credit without some balancing assets, so someone with bankruptcy on their credit reference file will struggle to get any kind of credit in the foreseeable future.