The number of Americans filing for personal bankruptcy topped 1.5 million last year, as high long-term jobless rates and depressed home prices drove more households to seek court protection.

Personal bankruptcies rose to 1.53 million, up 9% from 2009, the highest level since a revamp of the law took effect in 2005, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute, an association of attorneys and other bankruptcy professionals, and the National Bankruptcy Research Center.

A handful of Southwestern states accounted for much of the uptick in filings by households buckling under debt. "There are two groups of people who have had really high filings during the [financial] crisis—the Pacific Southwest and the Southeast," said Ronald Mann, a Columbia University law professor.

Conditions have improved in the Southeast, with filings dropping last year in Tennessee, South Carolina and Alabama. But the Southwest continues to struggle. In California, bankruptcies were up 25% from a year earlier. In Arizona, they rose nearly 24%.

Ed Soapes, 53 years old, of Corona, Calif., filed for bankruptcy protection in September 2010, after losing his job as an estimator for a construction company in February. He said he now relied on his and a daughter's disability benefits to pay the bills in a household that also includes two other children—one in college, one unemployed—and his mother. Mr. Soapes's filing listed more than $150,000 in debts, including a mortgage that he promised in the filing to continue to pay.