The number of Hawaii residents filing for bankruptcy continued to climb in 2010, but the pace of increase was the slowest in four years.

There were 3,954 cases filed last year, a 28 percent increase over the 3,101 cases filed 2009, according to U.S. Bankruptcy Court statistics. The 2010 rise followed increases of 49 percent in 2009, 50 percent in 2008 and 45 percent in 2007.

Those increases followed a sharp drop in the number of cases in 2006, a year after the law was changed making it more costly and time consuming to declare bankruptcy.

For the month of December, the number of new cases fell to 305, a 5 percent decline from the same month a year earlier. It was the first month-over-month decline in more than four years.