Small business bankruptcy · Des Plaines
The business owes it. You signed for it. Here is the way out.
Contractors, truckers, restaurant owners, shop owners. When the business debt lands on your name, bankruptcy deals with it the same way it deals with credit cards. The calls stop, the guarantee is discharged, and you keep your home.
Consumer and small business cases since 2011. You work with me, no hand-offs.
The first question I ask
Is the business worth saving, or is it the debt you need to be rid of?
The answer picks the chapter. Both answers have a good ending.
The problem
The personal guarantee follows you home.
Almost every business loan, lease, credit card and merchant cash advance was signed with a personal guarantee. When the business cannot pay, the lender comes after you: your paycheck, your bank account, your house.
- Merchant cash advances pulling from the account daily
- The SBA loan, the equipment lease, the vendor who is now suing
- A commercial lease with years left and a guarantee on it
- Payroll and sales taxes that stayed unpaid while you kept the lights on
“I did everything right and it still fell apart.” — I hear it every month. That is what bankruptcy is for.
Three routes
Which case, and for whom
The owner and the company are two different clients. Sometimes only one of them needs to file.
#owner
Chapter 7 for you, personally
The guarantees, the business cards, the personal debt that piled up alongside them. Gone in about four months. The business can keep operating if it stands on its own.
#owner
Chapter 13 for you, personally
You have income and something to protect: the house, the truck, the shop equipment. One monthly payment over three to five years, taxes included, and the business keeps running.
#company
Chapter 7 for the LLC or corporation
When it is time to close the doors. A trustee winds it down, deals with the creditors and the lease, and you stop answering for it. Usually filed alongside your own case.
Before you call
Three things to stop doing today
Stop paying the business debt with your retirement
Your 401(k) and IRA are protected in bankruptcy. Money you pull out to pay a merchant cash advance is gone for good.
Stop moving money or equipment around
Transferring the truck to a cousin or paying back your brother-in-law first creates problems the trustee will find. Tell me about it instead and we plan around it.
Stop signing new guarantees
No new credit lines, no new leases, no new personal promises to keep the business afloat one more month. Call first.
Read more
The two chapters, explained for the owner
Chapter 7 — the fresh start
Debts eliminated in about four months. For owners whose income fits the means test, and for closing a company cleanly.
How Chapter 7 works →
Chapter 13 — the repayment plan
Keep the business, the house and the equipment. Taxes and arrears paid over time, the rest often discharged.
How the plan works →
Questions owners ask
Straight answers about business debt
Often, yes. If the business itself is viable and the problem is the debt you personally signed for, a personal Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 can deal with that debt while the business keeps trading. We look at the numbers together first.
If you signed a personal guarantee, and almost every small business owner did, that debt is yours as well as the company's. Your personal bankruptcy handles your side of it.
No. You and the business are the same person in the eyes of the law, so a Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 covers the business debt and the personal debt in one case.
Those follow the owner personally and most of them are not discharged. Chapter 13 can pay them over time, interest-free in many cases, with the collectors stopped. Do not wait on these.
Bring the loan papers and the last bank statement. I will tell you what is possible.
One call. No hand-offs. No judgment.