# Draft First Day Motions Package > Ensures a comprehensive first-day package addresses key operational, contractual, labor, tax, insurance, cash-management, and organizational issues that commonly arise in a chapter 11 filing, while preserving the standard motion-specific requirements. - Skill: `finchipaiorg/draft-first-day-motions-package` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add finchipaiorg/draft-first-day-motions-package` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/finchipaiorg/draft-first-day-motions-package/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Coding & Dev Tools - Author: FinchipAIOrg (https://skillmd.com/u/finchipaiorg) - Updated: 2026-09-22 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/finchipaiorg/draft-first-day-motions-package --- # Skill: Draft First-Day Motions Package ## 1. Subject-matter triage - Treat the package as a coordinated set of court filings, not isolated templates. - Identify the debtor group, the non-filers, the cash flows, the workforce, the financing stack, and the operational dependencies before drafting any motion. - If the source set contains multiple entities, multiple programs, multiple payroll groups, or multiple utility/counterparty relationships, enumerate them first and draft to each distinct item rather than using one representative example. - Draft the core filing first, then the supporting declaration and motions, and keep the operative relief in each document rather than in a cover summary. - Where the facts are incomplete, preserve the issue and state the needed assumption explicitly instead of inventing details. ## 2. Failure modes the skill is correcting - Boilerplate first-day drafting that omits the debtor-specific facts needed to justify extraordinary relief. - Failure to align the CRO declaration with the motions on entity structure, liquidity, financing history, and operational distress. - Omission of exclusion rationale for any non-filing affiliate or program entity. - Underdeveloped treatment of customer-facing liabilities, employee claims, tax exposure, insurance continuance, intercompany balances, and contract assumption risk. - Cash-management language that ignores intercompany claim preservation or risks substantive-consolidation arguments. - Motion drafting that states a requested power without tying it to the bankruptcy provision, the factual predicate, and the operational consequence. - Inconsistent figures, dates, names, or program descriptions across the declaration and the motions. - Missing exhibit architecture, proposed orders, or motion-specific legal standards. - Generic “urgency” language that does not explain why the relief is needed at the outset of the case. ## 3. Legal frameworks / domain conventions that apply - Chapter 11 first-day relief must be grounded in the Bankruptcy Code provisions most directly implicated by the requested relief, and each motion should cite the operative section or rule supporting it. - Cash-management and bank-account relief should be framed around the debtor’s ordinary-course operating needs, postpetition account usage, and preservation of funds and intercompany claims. - Wage and benefits relief should track the Bankruptcy Code provisions governing employee compensation, benefit continuance, and administrative handling of prepetition and postpetition obligations. - Utility relief should be analyzed under the Bankruptcy Code utility-adequate-assurance framework, with case-specific facts showing why the proposed deposit or assurance is sufficient. - Critical-vendor relief should be tied to the debtor’s need to preserve continuity of supply or service, with a factual showing that the vendors are actually critical and that the requested treatment is bounded. - DIP-financing relief should address necessity, use of proceeds, budget discipline, interim authority if sought, and the relationship to cash collateral or existing liquidity. - The CRO declaration should present a sworn factual narrative supporting the requested relief and should not read as a legal brief alone. - If a motion implicates executory contracts, franchise arrangements, labor reductions, trust-fund taxes, or self-insured retention obligations, the motion should flag those issues and explain whether the requested relief touches them directly or only indirectly. - Use controlling authority for each legal proposition; do not rely on generic “courts routinely grant” phrasing without naming the statute, rule, or doctrine. ## 4. Analytical scaffolds - CRO declaration: - Identify the CRO’s qualifications, role, retention terms, and fee structure. - Describe the business, locations, revenue drivers, and operational dependencies. - Map the corporate structure, including the filer set and any excluded entities, and explain the business reason for each exclusion. - Summarize financing and recapitalization history, capital structure, and current liquidity condition. - Explain the causes of distress using specific operational and financial facts. - Describe any loyalty, customer, or similar program, the associated liability channels, and why the entity or program is included or excluded. - Summarize franchise or other material operating agreements, note any assumption or assignment constraints, and flag outstanding improvement or covenant obligations. - Assess workforce needs, layoff or reduction exposure, and payroll continuity issues. - Flag tax remittance, insurance, deposit, and contingent liability issues that the first-day motions should address. - Cash-management motion: - Explain the prepetition cash architecture and why the existing system should continue temporarily. - Identify accounts, signatories, transfer pathways, and any intercompany sweep or funding mechanics. - Preserve intercompany claims and avoid language that could imply waiver, subordination, or consolidation. - Connect the proposed relief to ongoing payroll, vendor payments, guest/refund processing, and tax remittances if applicable. - DIP-financing motion: - State the financing need, source, permitted uses, protections requested, and case budget discipline. - Identify the linkage between the financing and the debtor’s immediate operational runway. - Address any roll-up, priming, lien, or budget-variance concepts only if they appear in the source set and are actually sought. - Explain the necessity of the facility in relation to cash collateral, existing liquidity, or the absence of viable alternatives. - Wages-and-employee motion: - Distinguish prepetition wage exposure from postpetition payroll needs. - Address benefit continuation, reimbursement practices, and any PTO, severance, or expense-reimbursement handling raised by the facts. - If payroll taxes or similar trust-fund obligations are involved, flag the responsible-person exposure and the need for orderly remittance. - If workforce reductions are contemplated, identify the operational timing and notice implications. - Utilities motion: - Identify each utility category or provider type separately if the record distinguishes them. - Tie the proposed deposit, assurance, or other treatment to the debtor’s historic usage and current payment behavior. - Explain the operational consequence of service interruption and why continuity is essential at the outset of the case. - Critical-vendors motion: - Define the vendor categories with operational specificity, not just labels. - Describe why each vendor is critical, what service or supply it supports, and what would happen if it stopped. - Limit the requested payment or treatment to what is needed to secure continued performance. - Explain how the proposed relief fits within the debtor’s broader first-day stabilization plan. - For every motion, begin with a short background section that cross-references the CRO declaration, then present the legal standard, the case-specific facts, the requested relief, and a proposed order as an exhibit or attachment. - For every legal proposition used in the motion, cite the controlling statute, rule, or doctrine by name and section or rule number. - If the source materials identify multiple entities, programs, obligations, or counterparties, run the analysis separately for each and keep the resulting requests aligned with the record. ## 5. Vertical / structural / temporal relationships - Preserve the hierarchy between the declaration and the motions: the declaration supplies the factual record; the motions convert that record into requested relief. - Preserve the hierarchy within the motions: legal standard first, then case-specific facts, then necessity and scope of relief. - Track temporal status carefully: prepetition obligations, first-day/postpetition requests, interim versus final relief, and ongoing operational requirements should not be blurred together. - If a motion depends on a later event, hearing, or deadline, anchor the requested relief to that milestone rather than using vague urgency language. - Keep operational relationships explicit: payroll depends on cash management, cash management depends on bank access and intercompany mechanics, utilities and vendors depend on payment continuity, and financing supports all of the above. - If a fact appears in one document and is relied on elsewhere, repeat it consistently and do not alter the number, date, or characterization across filings. ## 6. Output structure conventions - Produce the package as separate, court-ready documents with file-specific content for each deliverable. - The CRO declaration should read as a sworn narrative with factual headings and exhibit references where helpful. - Each motion should contain: - title and introductory relief summary, - background tied to the declaration, - legal standard with cited authority, - case-specific facts, - requested relief, - proposed order language or an attached proposed order. - Use motion-specific prose, not a generic omnibus memo, and keep the requested relief bounded to the facts in the record. - Include exhibit placeholders where needed for proposed orders or schedules, but do not invent facts that are not supported by the source documents. - Before finalizing, verify that each file is complete, non-empty, and contains operative filing language rather than only a description of the intended filing. - Confirm that the declaration and all five motions are internally consistent on names, entity scope, dates, and financial figures.