ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Along with sharing poll results that feature expectations for the current fiscal year, the American Bankruptcy Institute revealed January consumer bankruptcies decreased 22 percent nationwide from December.

Based on data from the National Bankruptcy Research Center, ABI stated January's overall consumer filing total reached 92,669. This is down from the 118,146 consumer filings recorded in December.

The institute pointed out the January consumer filings figure represented the lowest monthly filing total since January 2009. That's when 88,773 filings were recorded.

The January amount also constituted a 9-percent drop from the same month of last year when the figure came in at 102,254.

Chapter 13 filings constituted 32 percent of all consumer cases in January. The institute said this was a slight increase from December.

"The decline in consumer filings in January represents a promising start to 2011 after years of expanding consumer debt and financial distress," declared ABI executive director Samuel Gerdano.

"Still, we anticipate that there will be nearly 1.6 million consumer bankruptcy filings by year end," Gerdano speculated.

Meanwhile, officials indicated a majority of respondents in a recent ABI Quick Poll predicted that bankruptcy filings will increase in fiscal year 2011.

In fact, a total of 74 percent of respondents took that stance. The institute broke that tally down saying 53 percent said they "strongly agreed" that filings would increase while 21 percent "somewhat agreed" that filings would increase. 

The institute also discovered 21 percent of respondents did not think that bankruptcy filings would increase in fiscal-year 2011. A breakdown indicated 17 percent "somewhat disagreed" and 4 percent "strongly disagreed" that filings would increase in FY2011.

ABI added that 4 percent of poll participants did not know or had no opinion on the question.

ABI recapped that total bankruptcies for fiscal-year 2010 (Oct. 1, 2009 through Sept. 30, 2010) were 1,596,355. Officials indicated that amount was up 14 percent over total the 2009 fiscal-year bankruptcy filings of 1,402,816, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

"Bankruptcies have increased each fiscal year since 2005 when Congress overhauled the bankruptcy code to reduce the number of consumers and businesses filing for bankruptcy," ABI officials noted.