GRAND RAPIDS -- Business is booming in at least one sector of the local and national economy: bankruptcy.

The

U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Grand Rapids

saw its caseload jump nearly 58 percent in March as more individuals and businesses are bitten by the recession.

Bankruptcy filings are up nearly 40 percent through the first quarter of 2009, with 3,916 individual and business cases in the Lower Peninsula's western half.

"Obviously, it's a difficult economic situation right now," said Dan LaVille, clerk of the court. "With each year, our numbers of cases continue to grow. The numbers we had in March were quite large."

Kim Rockinger, a recently divorced Cedar Springs mother of two, is about to add to the statistics.

Saddled with $50,000 in debt spread among 12 credit card issuers, plus medical bills and mortgage payments, she expects to file for bankruptcy soon.

Rockinger, who also filed for bankruptcy in 1996, said she thought she had the debt under control.

But the breakup of her marriage left too much debt for her to handle with her income from child support and her part-time job as an office assistant.

She takes some personal responsibility for the problem, saying she needs to control impulse buying and resist the onslaught of credit-card offers.

"I do like to shop," she said during a recent visit to Grand Rapids bankruptcy attorney David Andersen's office. "It's difficult. I have two girls, too, so we like to go shopping."

She said she rarely answers the phone these days, afraid it will be another bill collector.

Andersen said he encounters cases like Rockinger's all the time.

"I see this a lot where people make really good money and they can probably make their payments, but what they're not thinking about is what happens if they're laid off, or there's a divorce."

While Rockinger hasn't lost her job, the number of individual filings in recent months has been directly correlated with businesses closing or cutting back operations, Judge Jeffrey Hughes said.

Banks are taking over assets or selling businesses before they hit bankrutpcy court, which is why Hughes said there hasn't been a surge in business filings.

"What we see is, all of a sudden, you have a lot of unemployed workers, and it's those individuals who have to seek relief in bankruptcy," Hughes said.

The judge expects the impending closure of the General Motors plant in Wyoming to boost filings the same way closure of the Electrolux plant in Greenville drove many of its employees to his courtroom.

"The bankruptcy court addresses the flotsam and the jetsam of a business closing," Hughes said.

More and more companies are on the edge, giving Tom Sarb, a corporate-bankruptcy attorney for Miller Johnson in Grand Rapids, plenty to do even if his clients don't end up filing.

"It's about as active and maybe a little bit more so than a couple of earlier downturns," Sarb said. "The 1980-81 downturn was fairly active, and then there has been a lot of activity in Michigan since the year 2000 related to tool and dies."

Predictably, auto companies are among the hardest hit. Sarb's current clients include the creditors committee for Checker Motors, the Kalamazoo stamping operations known for the taxicabs it once made.

"I think everybody is just struggling with the drastically reduced volumes of parts that GM, Ford and Chrysler and everyone else are ordering these days," he said.

"I tell people that, unfortunately, I am very busy these days."

Local trends are in line with national statistics showing bankruptcies surging despite a 3-year-old federal law that made it much tougher for Americans to escape their debts, an Associated Press analysis found.

Christian Krupp II, a Grand Rapids attorney, said his business is up among insurance workers, mortgage brokers and sales people.

"I had one client that commented this is the year of the white-collar bankruptcy," Krupp said. "These are people making good money, $60,000 to $70,000, but their lifestyle is at $85,000 because of bonuses that they're no longer getting."

-- Associated Press writer Mike Baker contributed to this story.

E-mail Chris Knape: cknape@grpress.com