Draft Voluntary Chapter 11 Petition And Schedules

Skill: Draft Voluntary Chapter 11 Petition and Schedules

1. Subject-matter triage

• Treat the filing package as the primary deliverable set: petition, schedules, statement of financial affairs, and then the companion issues memo.
• Before drafting, separate filing entities from non-filing affiliates, and distinguish operating entities, holding entities, and any excluded subsidiaries or special-purpose vehicles.
• Build the package from the source documents first; do not infer missing facts where the documents can support a direct entry.

2. Failure modes the skill is correcting

• The petition omits or blurs the debtor group structure, entity names, jurisdictional facts, or relationship disclosures.
• Assets are miscoded across schedules, especially where property, prepaid items, deposits, or intangibles are present.
• Secured obligations are not distinguished from executory obligations, causing Schedule D and Schedule G to diverge from the underlying documents.
• Priority, contingent, disputed, or unliquidated unsecured claims are collapsed into a single general unsecured bucket.
• The statement of financial affairs is not aligned with the petition and schedules, leaving gaps in transfers, payments, lawsuits, insiders, or related-party transactions.
• The issues memo identifies avoidance and restructuring risks in general terms but does not tie them to the specific source-set facts and governing bankruptcy doctrine.

3. Legal frameworks / domain conventions that apply

• Petition and schedules must conform to the current voluntary Chapter 11 forms and bankruptcy disclosure conventions under the Bankruptcy Code and Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure.
• Schedule A/B should list estate property at fair value or realizable value as applicable, not simply book value, and should capture cash, receivables, deposits, prepaid items, inventory, fixtures, equipment, contract rights, and intangibles when present.
• Schedule D should capture secured claims with collateral, lien type, and perfection indicators where available; debt that functions as secured financing should not be miscast as a lease or ordinary contract.
• Schedule E/F should separate priority unsecured claims from nonpriority unsecured claims and flag claims that are contingent, unliquidated, or disputed.
• Schedule G should include executory contracts and unexpired leases, including hotel, vendor, management, service, and operating agreements where the facts support executory treatment.
• Schedule H should identify co-debtors, guarantors, and obligors tied to scheduled liabilities.
• The statement of financial affairs should reflect transfers, payments, lawsuits, insider relationships, business closures, acquisitions, dispositions, and other required disclosures under the applicable form.
• Preference analysis should be grounded in Bankruptcy Code § 547, including the ordinary course and insider lookback concepts where supported by the facts.
• Fraudulent transfer analysis should be grounded in Bankruptcy Code § 548 and any applicable state-law avoidance theory incorporated through Bankruptcy Code § 544.
• Priority tax and trust-fund issues should be evaluated under Bankruptcy Code § 507 and the tax characterization reflected in the records.
• WARN-related exposure, if implicated by workforce events, should be assessed under the WARN Act and flagged as contingent unsecured exposure where appropriate.
• Collective bargaining and labor-related obligations, if present, should be identified with the need to evaluate rejection and labor-process constraints under Bankruptcy Code § 1113 and related labor law.
• Insider, affiliate, and related-party issues should be analyzed under the Bankruptcy Code’s insider concepts and the disclosure obligations that follow from them.

4. Analytical scaffolds

• Start with a document inventory, then map each fact source to the filing component it supports.
• For each asset class, identify the debtor that owns it, the location or custodian if relevant, and the schedule entry that best fits the asset’s legal and economic character.
• For each liability, identify the obligor, claim type, amount basis, collateral or guaranty support, dispute status, and whether the liability belongs on Schedule D, E/F, or H.
• For each significant payment, transfer, or credit support event in the source set, ask: timing, recipient identity, value exchanged, and possible avoidance theory.
• For each unusual transaction, ask whether the transfer looks arm’s-length, whether reasonably equivalent value appears present, and whether insolvency or capital inadequacy issues are implicated.
• For each recurring contract or lease, ask whether performance remains due on both sides and whether the arrangement is executory or instead a financing device.
• For each insider, affiliate, or intercompany item, cross-check whether it belongs on the petition disclosures, schedules, SOFA, and issues memo simultaneously.
• For each disclosure entry, reconcile against other source documents so that the petition, schedules, and memo speak consistently to the same fact pattern.

5. Vertical / structural / temporal relationships

• Separate prepetition from postpetition facts whenever the source documents span both periods.
• Distinguish debtor-level obligations from property-level encumbrances, and secured debt from true operating contracts.
• Where the source set includes multiple entities, analyze each entity on its own record before aggregating to the filing package.
• Where there are several transfers or payments, enumerate them before analysis and treat each as a distinct avoidance candidate rather than collapsing them into one narrative.
• Track whether obligations are current, matured, accelerated, contingent, disputed, or subject to guaranty, because those temporal states change how they are disclosed.
• Where the same relationship appears in multiple documents, maintain consistency across the petition, schedules, and SOFA so that corporate structure, claims, and litigation disclosures align.

6. Output structure conventions

• Draft the petition and all schedules as completed filing-ready documents, not as commentary about how they should be completed.
• Write the filing package before the issues memo, and ensure each file is substantively populated rather than left as a placeholder.
• Use conventional bankruptcy headings and filing terminology; do not invent bespoke section names when an established form structure exists.
• In the schedules, use clear category labels, owner/obligor identifiers, claim characterization, and dispute flags where applicable.
• In the issues memo, use an issue-by-issue format with a short rule statement, the document facts that trigger the issue, the filing or restructuring consequence, and a practical next step.
• State the controlling authority for each legal proposition relied on in the memo, using the Bankruptcy Code, Rules, or other governing authority by name and section where applicable.
• If an issue depends on multiple source documents, identify the documents that interact and explain the interaction directly.
• Conclude the memo with a concise Recommended Actions section that assigns next steps to the relevant role and ties them to the filing timeline.
• Before finalizing, confirm that every named deliverable exists, is non-empty, and contains operative filing content rather than a description of the work.