Felony Charges and Your Finances: When Criminal Defense and Bankruptcy Intersect | Rossback Firm

A felony case puts pressure on a household that most people don’t fully appreciate until they’re inside it. Retainers for defense counsel. Bail or bond premiums. Lost wages from court appearances and pretrial conditions. If a conviction follows, the financial picture darkens further with court costs, victim assessments, restitution, and ongoing legal financial obligations that can outlast the underlying sentence by years. Many clients who walk into Rossback Firm dealing with criminal exposure are also quietly drowning in medical bills, credit card balances, or back taxes that predate the arrest. Handling both sides at once, criminal defense and consumer bankruptcy, requires understanding which debts a discharge actually wipes out and which ones follow you no matter what.

The Anatomy of a Criminal Case Bill

A typical felony conviction in Washington produces several distinct categories of debt, and they don’t all behave the same way under the Bankruptcy Code.

Court costs and fees. Filing fees, jury demand fees, court appointed attorney recoupment, and the standard Crime Victim Penalty Assessment under RCW 7.68.035, which currently runs $500 for adult felonies. These are imposed by the sentencing court and collected by the county clerk.

Fines. Statutory fines tied to the specific offense, ranging from a few hundred dollars to the $50,000 maximum on a Class A felony under RCW 9A.20.021.

Restitution. Money owed directly to the victim for documented losses under RCW 9.94A.753. This is the category that follows people the longest, and the one bankruptcy cannot touch in most circumstances.

Probation and supervision fees. DOC supervision costs, electronic home monitoring fees, treatment program copays, and drug testing charges. These accumulate during the term of community custody and can persist after.

Defense costs. The retainer, expert witness fees, investigator costs, and any private bond or bail premiums you paid to a bondsman. These are debts to private parties and behave differently than court-ordered obligations.

The Washington Legislature passed reforms in recent years, including changes under HB 1169, that eliminated interest on most non-restitution LFOs and gave courts more discretion to waive discretionary fees for indigent defendants. The Washington Courts website at courts.wa.gov publishes the current statutory framework, and the AOC’s LFO calculator can produce a realistic estimate of post-conviction exposure.

What Bankruptcy Can and Cannot Discharge

Section 523 of the Bankruptcy Code governs which debts survive a discharge. Several provisions matter directly for clients with criminal cases.

Restitution to a victim is not dischargeable under 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(13) in a Chapter 7, and § 1328(a)(3) bars discharge of restitution in a Chapter 13 as well. This is consistent across both chapters. A victim who is owed money from a criminal judgment will still be owed that money the day after your discharge.

Fines, penalties, and forfeitures payable to a governmental unit are not dischargeable under § 523(a)(7) when they are imposed for conviction of an offense and not compensation for actual pecuniary loss. Court costs, jury fees, and the Crime Victim Penalty Assessment generally fall into this category.

Civil judgments arising from willful and malicious injury to another person or their property survive discharge under § 523(a)(6), even without a criminal conviction attached. A debt traceable to assault, fraud, or intentional property damage often gets challenged by creditors using this provision.

Defense attorney fees, by contrast, are typically dischargeable. So are bail bond premiums, expert witness invoices, and most private investigator bills. These are ordinary contract debts to private parties and don’t carry the special protection that criminal restitution and government fines enjoy.

Credit card debt, medical bills, old utility accounts, deficiency balances on repossessed cars, and unsecured personal loans remain dischargeable in the usual way. A criminal case does not change the treatment of those obligations.

Chapter 7 Versus Chapter 13 With LFOs in the Picture

The choice of chapter matters more than people expect when criminal debt is involved.

Chapter 7 produces a fast discharge of unsecured debt, usually within four to five months of filing. It clears the medical bills, credit cards, and defense attorney balance. It does not stop the county clerk from continuing to collect on restitution, fines, or court costs. Wage garnishment and bank levies for nondischargeable LFOs can resume after the discharge enters.

Chapter 13 reorganizes debt into a three-to-five year payment plan. The automatic stay halts most collection during the plan, including some LFO collection activity, although criminal restitution payments required by a sentencing order generally must continue. A Chapter 13 plan can sometimes be structured to pay nondischargeable priority debts in full while reducing the bite from dischargeable creditors. For clients with substantial restitution and limited income, this approach occasionally produces better breathing room than a straight Chapter 7.

Strategic Sequencing With Rossback Firm

The order of operations matters. Filing bankruptcy before sentencing, during sentencing, or years after a conviction produces different results.

Pre-charge filing. Clients who anticipate a charge sometimes file bankruptcy early to clean up unrelated debt before the criminal case generates new obligations. The discharge does not affect future court-ordered restitution, but it can free up household income to fund a defense.

Post-conviction filing. Once restitution is set, that number is locked in as a nondischargeable claim. Filing afterward can still discharge defense costs, credit cards, and medical bills, which often makes the monthly LFO payment manageable for the first time.

Asset protection. Washington’s homestead exemption under RCW 6.13.030 protects substantial home equity, and the state’s other exemptions cover vehicles, retirement accounts, and personal property. A bankruptcy attorney can run the exemption analysis before any forced sale or judgment lien attaches.

LFO modification. Separately from bankruptcy, RCW 10.01.160 and RCW 10.82.090 allow defendants to petition the sentencing court to modify, waive, or reduce LFOs based on changed financial circumstances. Combining an LFO modification motion with a bankruptcy filing can shrink the surviving debt load significantly.

The U.S. Trustee’s office and the Western District of Washington Bankruptcy Court publish their own filing requirements, fee schedules, and means test thresholds at wawb.uscourts.gov for anyone wanting to verify the framework independently.

A felony case and a bankruptcy case look like separate problems on the surface, but the financial threads run together. Restitution and government fines will outlive a discharge. Defense costs and consumer debt usually won’t. Knowing the difference, and sequencing decisions accordingly, is what protects a household from being crushed twice. Rossback Firm handles both criminal defense and bankruptcy in Grays Harbor County, which means the analysis happens under one roof rather than between two firms passing paperwork. If you’re facing a felony charge and watching your finances unravel at the same time, schedule a consultation early enough to plan both sides together. The choices made in the first few months tend to set the trajectory for everything that follows.