Bankruptcy Petition - Chapter 7

DELAWARE CHAPTER 7 FILING-PACKAGE PREPARATION CHECKLIST

NON-OPERATIVE WORKSHEET — DO NOT SIGN OR FILE. Bankruptcy filings use current official forms and district-specific procedures. This checklist helps counsel assemble facts and verify the controlling sources before preparing the actual filing package.

1. Current Official Source Gate

☐ The preparer confirmed that every form, instruction, threshold, address, deadline, signature method, and local procedure comes from a current official source.

2. Debtor and Case Classification

Debtor 1 legal name and prior names: [________________________________]

Joint debtor legal name and prior names, if applicable: [________________________________]

Individual or business filing: [________________________________]

Consumer, primarily business, or other debt classification: [________________________________]

Current residence, domicile, principal place of business, and principal assets: [________________________________]

Requested filing date: [__/__/____]

Urgency or imminent event: [FORECLOSURE / EVICTION / REPOSSESSION / GARNISHMENT / LAWSUIT / UTILITY / NONE / DETAILS]

Conflict, eligibility, conversion, dismissal, refiling, and abuse-screening issues: [________________________________]

3. Court, District, Division, and Venue Review

Exact United States Bankruptcy Court: [________________________________]

District and division: [________________________________]

Venue facts: [________________________________]

Current venue authority and calculation: [________________________________]

Prior or related bankruptcy case, adversary proceeding, receivership, or insolvency matter: [________________________________]

Court-specific standing orders, judge procedures, or filing notices reviewed: [________________________________]

4. Official Filing-Package Inventory

Complete this table from the current official form package and local instructions. Do not rely on an older file name or form number copied from another case.

5. Identity, Privacy, and Signature Controls

☐ Legal names, aliases, entity names, and prior filing names were checked against source records.

☐ Full sensitive identifiers are placed only where the current official process requires them.

☐ Public filings and exhibits were reviewed for redaction.

☐ The current signature, retention, debtor-authorization, and electronic-filing procedures were reviewed for the selected court and filer type.

☐ No notary, witness, wet-signature, scanned-signature, or counterpart requirement was assumed from this checklist.

6. Household, Income, and Expense Record

Record the official data source, applicable period, household treatment, special-circumstance issue, and calculation method separately. Do not import thresholds or deductions from an older matter.

7. Asset and Exemption Development

Include tangible and intangible interests, claims, refunds, deposits, digital assets, business interests, trusts, inheritances, domestic-relations rights, insurance interests, property held for others, and property recently transferred or repossessed.

Exemption system and filing-date analysis: [________________________________]

Exemption authority and value calculation for each claimed item: [________________________________]

Potential avoidance, turnover, preference, fraudulent-transfer, lien, homestead, community-property, or ownership issue: [________________________________]

8. Creditor and Claim Record

Reconcile credit reports, statements, judgments, tax records, collection letters, lawsuits, domestic-support records, medical accounts, leases, utilities, governmental claims, guarantees, and business obligations. Classification is a legal determination; do not infer it from a creditor’s label alone.

9. Secured Property, Leases, and Executory Contracts

Do not promise retention, surrender, reaffirmation, redemption, assumption, rejection, modification, or discharge consequences until counsel confirms the available route and documents.

10. Prior Events and Financial-Affairs Timeline

Interview separately for prior cases, dismissed cases, payments, insider activity, transfers, closed accounts, safe-deposit boxes, storage, repossessions, foreclosures, garnishments, lawsuits, claims against others, businesses, environmental matters, tax filings, domestic-support obligations, and property held for another person.

11. Filing-Date Consequence Review

This checklist does not state that filing will stop a particular act or discharge a particular debt.

12. Filing and Post-Filing Workflow

13. Final Handoff Check

☐ This checklist was not filed, signed, notarized, or presented as an official form.

☐ Every filing in Section 4 uses the current official version and instructions.

☐ Names, addresses, dates, values, debts, income, expenses, transfers, prior cases, and exhibits reconcile to source records.

☐ Each exemption, eligibility, venue, stay, discharge, deadline, and treatment conclusion has current authority in the attorney workpapers.

☐ District, division, filing credentials, fee, matrix, signature, redaction, and local-procedure requirements were confirmed from the selected court’s official sources.

☐ The debtor reviewed the actual completed official forms through the required authorization process and had an opportunity to correct them before filing.