If you’re filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York, you likely still have a reliable income stream. Your debt just doesn’t match your income as well as you’d like. You need to reorganize to find an affordable payment plan and a way to run your business so that you get out of debt.
You may also be filing because you want an automatic stay to be put into place while you figure everything out. This means that the credit collection companies and anyone else trying to claim what you owe them have to give you some space. They have to let you breathe and sort everything out.
Efforts to reclaim the money or property have to stop under the automatic stay until the case is done. The stay begins as soon as you put in the paperwork to file for bankruptcy.
So, how secure is the stay? In most cases, it is rock solid. There are a few rare situations where it can be lifted, though.
For instance, you may ask for a stay on all of your property. However, you might not have any equity in some of that property. Additionally, you may not need it to reorganize and keep your business going. If so, the lender can ask the court to remove the stay so that it can foreclose upon that property and pay off some of the debt by selling it.
Even if this happens, though, it doesn’t take the stay off of all of your property.
When filing for bankruptcy, be sure you know how everything legally works and what options the lenders still have.
Source: United States Courts, “Chapter 11 – Bankruptcy Basics,” accessed Nov. 27, 2015