Bankruptcy · FRBP 9037
Redact schedules, pay stubs and tax returns the way Rule 9037 requires
Social Security numbers, birth dates, account numbers and minors’ names — found for you across every page, approved by you, removed from the file itself, then re-scanned before it goes to the court or the trustee.
The clerk does not check your redactions; the rule puts that on the filer. RedactWorks highlights every identifier Rule 9037(a) covers, waits for your approval, permanently removes what you approve — and then re-scans the finished PDF and refuses to release it if any approved item is still readable. A box drawn over live text is not a redaction. A file that has been re-extracted and checked is.
Start with 3 documents free, no card. Firms on recurring work use the $14.99/month plan (150 documents); a $1.99 3-pack covers the occasional case.
See it on a sample — no signup, no upload
The AI has already scanned this synthetic schedule excerpt. Notice what it did not highlight: the debtor’s name and the creditor’s name stay in the filing, because Rule 9037 does not cover them. The four things it does cover are found; the decision is yours.
Debtor Jordan A. Pemberton, SSN 123-45-6789, date of birth 03/14/1981. Creditor Example Bank, N.A., account ending 4415-8827-0031, unsecured, $8,240.00.
Dependent listed on Schedule J: Milo Pemberton, age 9. Pay advice attached from employer, direct deposit to account 0091-7734-2255.
The AI found 5 items — the decision is yours. Click any highlight to keep it visible; nothing is redacted until you approve.
Verified. 5 items permanently removed — the text is deleted, not covered — hidden data stripped, and the finished file re-scanned to prove it. Kept visible: none.
Now try your own fileSynthetic sample — every name and number is invented. The AI can highlight, but it can’t redact: only your approval applies a black box.
What Rule 9037(a) requires
Federal Rule of Bankruptcy Procedure 9037(a) mirrors Civil Rule 5.2(a). Unless the court orders otherwise, a filing that contains any of these four identifiers may include only the truncated form:
| Identifier | What may remain in the filing | Where it shows up |
|---|---|---|
| Social Security or taxpayer ID number | Last four digits | Pay advices, tax returns, older creditor correspondence, proofs of claim |
| Birth date | The year | Intake forms, medical bills, insurance statements |
| Name of a minor | Initials | Schedule J dependents, support orders, school and medical bills |
| Financial-account number | Last four digits | Schedules D, E/F, bank statements, pay advices, proofs of claim |
Rule 9037(h), added in 2019, exists for the other case: a motion to redact a document that was already filed unredacted, served on the filer, with the court restricting access in the meantime. The rules committee built a cleanup procedure because the failure is routine. The cheaper path is to not need it.
Why the black box fails, in the judiciary’s own words
In 2024 the Federal Judicial Center sampled 4.68 million PACER documents and found 22,391 unredacted Social Security numbers. Its description of the most common failure:
“The party who filed the document attempted to redact the SSNs by covering them with a black box. The SSNs can be made visible, however, simply by selecting and deleting the box or by highlighting the page and copying and pasting the text behind it into a word processor. These 6,198 improperly redacted SSNs account for 28% of the SSNs identified in this study.”Federal Judicial Center, Unredacted Social Security Numbers in Federal Court PACER Documents (April 2024). The same study found 1,100 of the improperly redacted numbers in proof-of-claim registers.
RedactWorks does not draw boxes over text. It removes the characters from the PDF’s text layer, strips metadata, form fields, comments and attachments that can carry the same identifiers, and then re-extracts the text from the finished file to confirm the approved items are gone. If one survives, the file is not released.
Documents this is built for
- Schedules and the statement of financial affairs. Creditor account numbers on D and E/F; dependents on J.
- § 521 payment advices and tax returns for the trustee. Pay stubs carry the SSN and the direct-deposit account; returns carry everything.
- Bank and credit-card statements, proofs of claim and their attachments. The creditor side is where the FJC found the largest cluster of improperly redacted numbers.
Each document runs up to 50 pages. Scanned PDFs and phone photos of paper are OCR’d first. Your original upload is never modified; the redacted file is a separate copy.
How verified redaction works
- Detect. Upload the file and detection runs automatically — Social Security numbers, dates of birth, account numbers, minors’ names, and the other identifiers that re-identify a person in context. High-risk categories (SSN, financial, medical) stay locked on.
- Review and approve. Every finding is a checkbox over still-visible text. Uncheck what should stay, add anything missed. Nothing is removed until you approve.
- Redact and verify. Approved text is permanently removed and hidden data stripped — then the finished file is re-scanned, and delivery is blocked if any approved item survives.
Start redacting — verified output
Start with 3 documents free, no card. Firms on recurring work use the $14.99/month plan (150 documents); a $1.99 3-pack covers the occasional case.
Common questions
Rule 9037 lets the last four digits stay. Does RedactWorks keep them?
No — it removes the whole identifier, which satisfies the rule (the rule sets a ceiling on what may remain, not a floor). The debtor’s full Social Security number still reaches the court the way it always has, on the separate statement that is not part of the public record. If the trustee needs a particular number left visible in an exhibit, uncheck that finding before you approve and it stays.
Does it redact the debtor’s name or the creditor’s name?
Not by default. Rule 9037 covers four identifiers, and names of adults are not among them. Detection highlights what the rule covers plus the always-on high-risk categories; you can add a highlight to anything else by hand before approving.
Is drawing a black box in Acrobat real redaction?
Only if you also run Acrobat’s apply-and-sanitize step correctly, every time. A box by itself covers the text; the characters stay in the file. RedactWorks removes the text, strips hidden data, and re-scans the output to confirm the approved items are gone, so the check is built in rather than remembered.
Can a paralegal prepare it and the attorney approve?
Yes. The highlight stage shows every proposed redaction over still-visible text, so one person can prepare and another can review before anything is removed. Nothing is redacted or released until someone approves.
What does it cost?
Three documents are free with no card. After that it is $14.99/month for 150 documents, or a $1.99 pack of three. Each document can run up to 50 pages.