The mortgage and credit crisis has reached into U.S. Bankruptcy Court as an increasing number of Rhode Islanders are declaring bankruptcy in an effort to save their homes from foreclosure, according to lawyers and court officials.

The number of cases filed during the first four months of the year have climbed 38 percent over last year and 350 percent since 2006, according to court statistics.

While some of the increase can be explained in part by the results of a 2005 change in the bankruptcy laws, those who work in the bankruptcy court say the housing crisis is an important factor driving the numbers up.

“It’s real-estate mortgages, people trying to stay in their house,” said Judge Arthur N. Votolato. “They feel like they have no choice.”

While Votolato cautioned he can’t go into too much detail about the cases he presides over, he said he has seen a shift toward mortgages and away from credit-card debt and gambling losses as the primary causes of bankruptcy filings.

Bankruptcy lawyer Christopher M. Lefebvre of Pawtucket agreed. “As a practitioner, I see that it’s really being fueled by the housing market,” he said. “The real factor is the housing and the wages.”

Bankruptcy judges cannot keep homeowners in their homes by simply erasing mortgage debt. In fact, the U.S. Senate in April rejected a bill that would have given judges the power to ease mortgage terms to help borrowers avoid foreclosure, legislation that had passed the House in March.

But by canceling other personal debts, a bankruptcy filing can help a homeowner save money to cover mortgage payments.

As the reasons for filing are changing, so are the people who are seeking Bankruptcy Court protection.

“It is affecting a different segment,” said Lefebvre. He is seeing people with more education who have been hit with rapidly rising adjustable mortgage rates, unemployment or both. Those seeking protection include unemployed lawyers, accountants, teachers and nurses, he said. “I’ve never seen such bleak, hopeless circumstances for people that two or three years ago were on top of the world.”

Indeed, more and more Rhode Islanders are at risk of losing their homes. In April, 5.5 percent of loans were delinquent for at least 90 days, compared with 4.5 percent a year ago, according to the California real estate research firm First American CoreLogic.

Not surprisingly, the state’s foreclosure rate is also high. In the fourth quarter of 2008, 3.49 percent of mortgages were in foreclosure, tied with Maine for the highest rate in New England, according to the most recent report from the Mortgage Bankers Association. Data from the first three months of 2009 will be released Thursday.

Lefebvre said there is another reason for the spike in filings the last four years.

“The dramatic jump is a little bit skewed,” he said.

During the first four months of 2006, the first year after the law changed in October 2005, 388 cases were filed in the Rhode Island U.S. Bankruptcy Court. The following year, that number rose to 797, and then 1,267 in 2008.

“Those were rebounding years,” Lefebvre said. In October 2005, new rules took effect that made it harder for consumers to walk away from credit card debt if they had the ability to pay part of what they owed. That resulted in a crush of cases just before the new rules took effect, followed by a precipitous drop. In October 2005 alone, 1,833 cases were filed to beat the deadline, more than would be started in all of 2006, when 1,556 were filed.

Court officials said many bankruptcy lawyers abandoned their practice in that specialty, with a variety of reasons offered: not wanting to learn all the changes, tougher rules for lawyers handling bankruptcies and the lack of business. But now, those lawyers are returning to the court as clients resurge.

“People are coming back to the well that they thought was dry,” Lefebvre said. “The bankruptcy courts throughout the country are doing an extremely brisk business.”

But the 1,746 cases filed in the first four months of 2009 are not extreme when compared with the nine years before the law changed. During that nine-year period, the number of cases in the first four months of each year ranged from 1,460 to 1,828 and averaged 1,652. That means this year’s filings are 6 percent ahead of the average for that period.

pparker@projo.com