Redacting a PDF for a bankruptcy filing

Updated September 5, 2026. Not legal advice; confirm the current rule, the local rules and any order in your case.

What Rule 9037 says

Federal Rule of Bankruptcy Procedure 9037 applies to every electronic or paper filing in a bankruptcy case, by a party or a nonparty, including proofs of claim. Quoted from the rule text published by the Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, read September 5, 2026:

Unless the court orders otherwise, in an electronic or paper filing with the court that contains an individual's social-security number, taxpayer-identification number, or birth date, the name of an individual other than the debtor known to be and identified as a minor, or a financial-account number, a party or nonparty making the filing may include only:

The filing may include only (Rule 9037(a)):

1. the last four digits of the social-security number and taxpayer-identification number;
2. the year of the individual's birth;
3. the minor's initials; and
4. the last four digits of the financial-account number.

The minor category is narrower than in the civil rule: it covers an individual other than the debtor who is known to be and identified as a minor.

Administrative and agency records are exempt in the civil rule, but under Rule 9037(b)(2) they lose that exemption when filed with a proof of claim. Claims packets are where most bankruptcy redaction failures happen.

Rule 9037(b)(6) exempts a filing subject to 11 U.S.C. §110, which governs non-attorney bankruptcy petition preparers.

Rule 9037(h) gives a route to fix a filing that already went in unredacted; the sooner the motion is made, the shorter the exposure.

What is exempt

Rule 9037(b): the redaction requirement does not apply to the following.

1. a financial-account number that identifies the property allegedly subject to forfeiture in a forfeiture proceeding;
2. the record of an administrative or agency proceeding, unless filed with a proof of claim;
3. the official record of a state-court proceeding;
4. the record of a court or tribunal, if that record was not subject to the redaction requirement when originally filed;
5. a filing covered by (c); and
6. a filing subject to §110.

Sealing, protective orders and mistakes

Redacting a document already on file (Rule 9037(h))

Rule 9037(h) sets out a motion procedure for an entity to redact a previously filed document that contains unredacted identifiers: what the motion must include, who must be served, and the court's power to restrict public access to the document while the motion is pending. Read the subsection before relying on it; the text is long and this page summarises rather than quotes it.

What to search for in the PDF

The rule names categories; the PDF holds them as text, as form-field values, as comments and as pixels on scanned pages. Search all of those, not only the visible page.

Category	What may remain	Where to look
Social Security and taxpayer-identification numbers	the last four digits	nine-digit numbers in 000-00-0000 and 00-0000000 form; creditor exhibits and account statements attached to proofs of claim are the usual source
Dates of birth	the year	dates near DOB, born and date of birth in account applications and medical bills
Names of minors other than the debtor	the initials	names of dependants in schedules and support documents; the debtor's own name is not covered by this category
Financial-account numbers	the last four digits	account numbers on statements, cards, loan documents and cheques attached to claims; a proof of claim packet often has dozens

How to redact so nothing leaks

1. OCR scanned pages first, so search finds every instance and no later OCR pass resurrects the text.
2. Search by pattern and by name, then review every hit. Accept or reject before applying anything.
3. Remove, then draw. True redaction deletes the text and image data, then marks the area. A box drawn over live text is not a redaction.
4. Scrub the rest of the file: metadata, comments, bookmarks, attachments, hidden layers, form fields.
5. Save as a new file, never an incremental save, so the earlier revision is gone.
6. Verify by extracting the text of the output and searching for every redacted term, then keep a redaction log.

The full method, with the places redacted information hides and how to verify by hand, is in How to redact a PDF properly.

How ExhibitSet handles it

ExhibitSet's search-and-redact ships with pattern presets for Social Security and taxpayer-identification numbers, dates of birth and financial-account numbers, finds matches in page text, form-field values and comments, and shows each hit for review. Applying removes the underlying text and image data; the output is then re-read and searched for every marked term, and the job refuses to report success if anything is still found. The redaction log records page, reason and area without the redacted text. Everything runs in your browser; no document, page or file name is uploaded.

Frequently asked questions

Do creditors have to redact the exhibits to a proof of claim?

Yes. Rule 9037(a) applies to a party or nonparty making a filing, and Rule 9037(b)(2) removes the administrative-record exemption for records filed with a proof of claim. Account statements attached to a claim must show only the last four digits of the account number.

Does the minor rule cover the debtor?

No. Rule 9037(a) protects the name of an individual other than the debtor known to be and identified as a minor. The debtor is identified in the case by name.

Can a document filed without redaction be fixed?

Rule 9037(h) provides a motion procedure to redact a previously filed document and lets the court restrict public access while the motion is pending. Move quickly; the document is public until then.