Question #1 You do not necessarily need to file for personal bankruptcy - however the criteria for your decision should be based on (a) what type of debt you and your LLC has, (b) how large the $amounts are, (c) can you easily survive without whatever collateral you may have pledged for the debt, and (d) whether or not you personally guaranteed the debt. For example, you mention credit cards in the company name - did you personally guarantee those credit cards? If so, bankrupting the LLC will likely not prohibit your lenders from looking to you to honor the personal guarantee and pay back the borrowed money. Question #2 You do not necessarily have to form a new LLC to start over. Your options include continuing as a sole proprietorship (and file a Schedule C with your personal tax return). However, you may want to form a new LLC if you need to shelter yourself from any general legal liability risk in your line of business. Question #3 Bankruptcy will not affect a new LLC if you decide to form one. However, virtually all lenders in the U.S. subscribe to databases (LexisNexis, Weststar, etc) that track bankruptcies (BKs are public record) - and those lenders will be extremely reluctant to loan to you or loan to any entity that you have equity in for a period of ten years (that's why filing BK should be your absolute last resort alternative). Best of Luck

Thanks for chiming in, CrestCapital. mds622- You can receive automatic email updates when someone replies to your posts. All you need to do is select the box in 'subscriptions' on the right side of the page when you are posting your message.

Opening a new business after filing bankruptcy or the discharge is actually easy. Hard part is getting loan but I a sure there are options out there for the cause. ------------------ John Trading