The passage of the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act has changed the face of bankruptcy law in a way that some say does not benefit the average citizen.

Another of the Act's stipulations mandates credit counseling for those filing for bankruptcy.
"If you've ever sat with a client and helped them navigate the screens and go through the online credit counseling, it's really not a device that's going to provide anybody with truly useful training or information," Lawrence said. "It adds typically $100 to the cost of a person filing bankruptcy because they have to do two sessions and each one typically costs around $50."

"In a nutshell my take on the changes that took place in 2005 in the United States is that they wanted to make themselves less debtor friendly," Rajak said. "Somebody somewhere had come to the conclusion that the debtors had had a long and very happy run and maybe it's true - maybe there are lots of personal debtors out who are getting away with vast amounts of debts. I suspect not, myself - I think that when people get into debt, they have all sorts of problems."