Charging order

A charging order, in English law, is an order obtained from a court or judge by a judgment creditor, by which the property of the judgment debtor in any stocks or funds or land stands charged with the payment of the amount for which judgment shall have been recovered, with interest and costs. A charging order, in English law, is an order obtained from a court or judge by a judgment creditor, by which the property of the judgment debtor in any stocks or funds or land stands charged with the payment of the amount for which judgment shall have been recovered, with interest and costs. Before the advent of the charging order, a creditor pursuing a partner in a partnership was able to obtain from the court a writ of execution directly against the partnership's assets, which led to the seizure of such assets by the sheriff. This result was possible because the partnership itself was not treated as a juridical person, but simply as an aggregate of its partners. The seizure of partnership assets was usually carried out by the sheriff, who would go down to the partnership's place of business and shut it down. That caused the non-debtor partners to suffer financial losses, sometimes on par with the debtor partner, and the process was considered to be entirely “clumsy.' To protect the non-debtor partners from the creditor of the debtor-partner it was necessary to keep the creditor from seizing partnership assets (which was also in line with the developing perception of partnerships as legal entities and not simple aggregates of partners) and to keep the creditor out of partnership affairs. These objectives could only be accomplished by limiting the collection remedies that creditors previously enjoyed. The rationale behind the charging order applied initially only to general partnerships, where every partner was involved in carrying on the business of the partnership; it did not apply to corporations because of their centralized management structure. However, over the years the charging order protection was extended to limited partners and LLC members. Both partnership statutes and limited liability company statutes (in most domestic and foreign jurisdictions that have these entity types) provide for charging orders. In almost all the states, partnership and LLC statutes are based on the uniform acts, such as the Revised Uniform Partnership Act of 1994 (“RUPA”), the Uniform Limited Partnership Act of 2001 (“ULPA”) or the Uniform Limited Liability Company Act of 1996 (“ULLCA”), or the earlier versions of these acts. Membership interests in LLCs and partnership interests are afforded a significant level of protection through this charging order mechanism. The charging order limits the creditor of a debtor-partner or a debtor-member to the debtor's share of distributions, without conferring on the creditor any voting or management rights. Given the historical framework of charging orders, it may be argued that their protection should not extend to single member LLCs (there are no other “partners” to protect from the creditor). However, neither the uniform acts nor any of the state charging order statutes make any distinction between single-member and multi-member LLCs. Some courts have held that the charging order protection would apply in a case where all of the partners of a limited partnership were the debtors of a single creditor. The creditor had argued to no avail that because there were no “innocent” (non-debtor) partners to protect, the charging order protection should not apply. In in re Albright, 291 B. R. 538 (Bankr. D. Colo. 2003), one bankruptcy court held that the charging order protection does not apply to single-member LLCs. The court concluded that, based on the Colorado LLC statutes, a membership interest in an LLC can be assigned, including management rights. To date, with the exception of the Albright case, there are no cases analyzing the efficacy of charging orders in the single-member LLC context. Similar to the traditional liability shield commonly associated with limited liability entities, the protection of the charging order may be pierced by a creditor. In that eventually the charging order limitation becomes a moot point, because the entity is no longer considered to have a separate legal identity from its owners. In a state requiring a business purpose, a partnership or an LLC holding personal property may be subject to a reverse piercing claim. Entities holding personal assets should be formed in states like Delaware, that allow entities to be formed for any lawful purpose. The provisions of charging orders in England and Wales are under the Charging Orders Act 1979 (formerly under the Judgment Acts 1838 and 1840)