What I dont understand it, if the wife filed BK then the bank would forgive her? Because this is the wordings from OP's post about the situation:

<<they said unless some payment is made towards those old accounts or that a BK is written into the memo of those accounts (my wife did not file BK fyi), she will probably never get a new Chase card.>>

So she would be better off to file BK years ago? And what is the meaning of C/O?