Including restaurant in Ch7

Has anyone included the restaurant in CH7 filing? My wife owns the restaurant as LLC and we are including the restaurant in CH7 as an asset. Pizza and Fried Chicken restaurant has typical old equipments (10+ years old). My wife takes home $1,000 as a salary and after than the net profit is averaging less than $1,000 per month, so my attorney thinks that the trustee may allow us to keep the restaurant since it is very hard to unload these days.

Please share your experience if you had a similar one.

Thank you.

I owned a small retail store that had been losing money for several months (despite showing a good profit in 2007). I consulted two different BK attorneys, both of them advised me to close the store and liquidate the assets because if I didn't then the court would.

However, that all depends on your state's laws. You may be able to exempt the business and/or its assets as "tools of trade" or a similar exemption. This is where you really need a lawyer familiar with your state's laws and the trustees that you would be dealing with in a BK. Many of the laws are open to some interpretation especially in the area of what numbers are realistic and acceptable for the various budgetary categories, and some trustees are more difficult than others about requiring appraisals on equipment or other assets.

The LLC is considered an asset of your wife's. The Trustee's are interested in any and all assets they can liquidate - including business equiptment. This is a complication to your BK. You must get an experienced BK attorney that knows how to handle this situation.

Look at this article to see what you can do when you have a business prior to BK:

http://www.moranlaw.net/struggling.htm

Thanks for good information. I retained very experienced attorney and he mentioned that the trustee in our district might let us keep the restaurant since our equipments are very old and they might not be worth much any way.

I will let you know how it goes.