ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The American Bankruptcy Institute spotted a 19-percent month-over-month rise in total filings in the United States.

According to data provided by Epiq Systems, all bankruptcy filings in February totaled 104,418, up from the 87,981 filings in January.

Officials also noticed filings per day rose 27 percent to 3,601 from 2,838 in January. They also computed the 99,288 total noncommercial filings in February represented a 20-percent increase over the January total of 83,014.

ABI mentioned the total commercial filings of 5,130 for February increased 3 percent over the 4,967 filings in January.

When compared to a year earlier, however, the institute explained the Epiq data showed that the total February filings decreased 5 percent from the same month last year when 109,565 filings were processed.

The total commercial filings for February fell 16 percent from the 6,076 commercial filings recorded in February of last year.

Total noncommercial filings registered a 4 percent decrease from the 103,489 filings in February 2011.

ABI went on to highlight changes to total commercial Chapter 11 filings changed slightly in February.

Overall, the February commercial Chapter 11 filing total of 750 represented a 1-percent increase over January's total of 744, but a decrease of 3 percent from the February 2011 total of 770.

Chapter 15 filings experienced the largest increases in February. The February Chapter 15 filing total of 40 was 567 percent more than the 6 filings registered in 2011 and 74 percent greater than the 23 filings in January.

Officials also said the average nationwide per capita bankruptcy-filing rate for the first two calendar months of 2012 increased to 3.73 (total filings per 1,000 per population).

They added states with the highest per capita filing rate (total filings per 1,000 population) for the first two months of 2012 were:

1. Tennessee (6.93)
2. Nevada (6.29)
3. Georgia (6.28)
4. Alabama (5.58)
5. California (5.28)

"The stagnant housing sector and high unemployment continue to stress the cash flow of consumers and businesses," stated ABI executive director Samuel Gerdano.

"As consumers and businesses work to shed tremendous debt loads, there are times when bankruptcy is the only shelter to provide financial relief," Gerdano acknowledged.

ABI reiterated that it has partnered with Epiq Systems, a leading provider of managed technology for the global legal profession, in order to provide the most current bankruptcy filing data for analysts, researchers and members of the news media.