Liquidation Lawyers in Melbourne

The winding-up clock usually starts three weeks before court

Either your own company is heading towards liquidation, or a company that owes you money has just gone into one. We act on both sides of that file, and either way the first call to 1800 130 120 is free.

If you are the director, most court liquidations in Victoria begin with a creditor’s statutory demand for a debt of $4,000 or more. From the day it is served you have 21 days to pay, settle, or apply to set it aside. Miss that window and your company is presumed insolvent, and a winding-up application in the Federal Court or the Supreme Court of Victoria usually follows. At the winding-up hearing it is then very hard to run arguments you could have run during the 21 days. Those three weeks are the part of this you can still influence, and our insolvency lawyers page goes through them in detail.

Facing a winding-up application: what you can actually do

Even after an application is filed, the company is not finished. We regularly do one of four things before the hearing: negotiate payment or settlement with the petitioning creditor, oppose the application where a genuine basis exists, seek an adjournment so the directors can appoint a voluntary administrator, or move a company with liabilities under $1 million into small business restructuring so the directors keep control while a plan goes to creditors.

Which path fits comes down to numbers: what the company owes, what it still earns, and where it stands with the ATO. We can go through those with you in one call. If the honest answer is that the company cannot be saved, a creditors’ voluntary liquidation on your timetable, with a liquidator you chose, is almost always better for you than a court appointment on a creditor’s timetable.

Choose the timing, or have it chosen for you

A planned creditors’ voluntary liquidation and a forced court winding-up can end in much the same place. The difference is that in the first one you pick the timing and the liquidator, and your conduct as a director gets explained properly instead of reconstructed by a stranger months later. Before you resolve anything we check your Director Penalty Notice exposure, your personal guarantees and your insolvent trading risk, because those three follow you out of the company. If they add up to more than you could personally carry, we cost out bankruptcy and the alternatives to it in the same conversation. You get a written view on the first call.

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Directors: what follows you out of the liquidation

The company’s debts generally die with the company, but three things outlive it. Personal guarantees you signed for landlords, suppliers or financiers stay enforceable against you. The landlord is usually quickest off the mark, because a failed tenant leaves empty premises and a make-good bill behind, and that argument then runs as one of our commercial lease disputes with your guarantee sitting under it. A lockdown Director Penalty Notice for unpaid PAYG, GST or superannuation stays with you no matter what happens to the company. And if the liquidator concludes the company traded while insolvent, the court can order you to compensate creditors out of your own pocket. Our director liability page goes through each one, and we check all three on your first call.

Creditors: recovering something from a liquidation

Lodging an unsecured proof of debt is the bare minimum, and on its own it rarely gets you much. We look for the recoveries that sit outside the statutory queue: a director’s personal guarantee, a security interest registered on the PPSR, retention-of-title rights over goods you supplied, and, for unpaid employees, the Fair Entitlements Guarantee. Staff who were let go in the weeks before the appointment often ring about more than their entitlements, and where the dismissal itself was the problem the claim is wrongful termination rather than anything the liquidator handles. If a liquidator writes to you demanding repayment of an unfair preference, do not pay before getting advice. The good-faith and running-account defences defeat many of these claims, and our debt recovery lawyers run them regularly.

What the first call covers

Call 1800 130 120 or use the form on this page. Within one conversation we tell you what clock you are on, whether the debt is genuinely disputed, your personal exposure as a director, or your realistic recovery as a creditor. Evenings and weekends included when a deadline is running.