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Americans filed for bankruptcy in growing numbers in February, buckling under the combined weight of rising energy prices, a weakening housing market and sky-high personal debts.

An average of 3,960 bankruptcy petitions were filed per day nationwide last month, up 18 percent from January and up 28 percent from a year earlier, according to Automated Access to Court Electronic Records, a bankruptcy and data management company.

February was the busiest month for filings since Congress overhauled the bankruptcy law in 2005. Bankruptcy experts said the rise was particularly worrisome because those changes made filing for bankruptcy more complicated and expensive.

“This number of bankruptcies may be under-representative of the true financial distress consumers are feeling because of the Congress has taken steps,” said Jack Williams, a scholar in residence at the American Bankruptcy Institute and a professor at Georgia State University.

The latest figures show the financial pain is spreading from states like California and Florida, which exemplified the housing boom and subsequent bust to those along the Eastern Seaboard like Maryland, Virginia and Delaware, which were among the 10 states with the largest percentage increase in filings in January and February. “You are seeing a good size uptick everywhere,” said Mike Bickford, president of Automated Access.

Bankruptcy experts caution, however, that data from just one or two months can be misleading.

“The monthly rate filing bankruptcy has a lot of cyclicality, Robert M. Lawless, a professor of law at the University of Illinois College of Law, on Tuesday to the widely read blog on bankruptcy, Creditslips.org. Some experts, for example, bankruptcies say often seem to rise in February as debts from the holiday season come due. Even so, the trend is definitely upward, Mr. Lawless wrote. States as disparate as Rhode Island and Kentucky joined the top 10 list, and the absolute number of filings rose significantly.

Mr. Williams expects the number of bankruptcies nationwide to reach 1.2 million to 1.4 million this year, up from 826732 in 2007, Mr. Lawless expects more than one million. (In 2004, the last year with a set of normalized data were filed petitions 1597462, according to Automated Access).

The states with the most significant increase in bankruptcy filings during the first two months of 2008 were California, with a 33 percent increase; Maryland, up 29 percent, and Florida, with a 26 percent rise, the data shows. Filings fell in 16 states, including Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, South Dakota, Kansas and Wyoming.

Proponents of the bankruptcy law in 2005 argued that some consumers were abusing the law, using Chapter 7, or liquidation, to shed credit card debt. The bill, supported by both Republicans and Democrats, the increased expense for everyone and reduced the protections for everyone, “said Mr. Williams.

Elizabeth Warren, a professor at Harvard Law School and the author of books on bankruptcy, said, “The credit industry did its best to drive up the cost of filing but when enough families are in trouble they will fight their way through the paper and thicket higher attorneys’ fees to get help.

Ms. Warren says that the increase also reflects changing attitudes about bankruptcy. Many Americans now understand that is legal filing bankruptcy, something many did not appreciate a few years ago. Studies last year showed that one of seven families were dealing with debt collectors, who are often the families not to file for bankruptcy, she said.

“The word is leaking out that the bankruptcy courts are open for business,” says Mrs. Warren.

Record home foreclosures have contributed to the rise in bankruptcies on their own but do not account for the latest increase.

“Rising bankruptcy certainly understates the bankruptcy because stress is not a refuge from foreclosure,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, said. Under the current bankruptcy code, the courts can not alter the terms of first mortgages. Proposed legislation in Congress seeks to change this, but few think it will pass.