Substitute House Bill 48, an amendment to Ohio’s Limited Liability Company Act, discussed in our December 9, 2011 post, Charging Order Protections for Multi-Member and Single-Member LLCs (SMLLCs), has been passed by the Ohio General Assembly and signed into law by Governor Kasich. This act amends ORC 1705.19 to expressly provide that a charging order is the "sole and exclusive remedy" of a creditor seeking to satisfy judgment against the LLC membership interest of a debtor and to prohibit any creditor of a member of an LLC from having any right to obtain possession of, or to exercise legal or equitable remedies with respect to, the property of the LLC. It also specifically limits the rights of a judgment creditor who has obtained a charging order against a debtor’s membership interests to those of an assignee of a membership interest, as laid out in ORC 1705.18. The amendment will become effective May 4, 2012.
The act contains no exception for SMLLCs and makes a charging order a judgment creditor’s exclusive remedy to reach the membership interests of its debtor. Because of this, it is likely that Ohio courts will interpret the statute to provide SMLLCs with the same charging order protections as multi-member LLCs, leaving creditors unable to recover judgments by forcing the sale of their debtors’ SMLLC assets and distributing proceeds.
Bankers should take necessary precautions to avoid relying on unreachable assets of the debtor’s SMLLC as security for the credit they extend. In most cases, the straight-forward solution is prepare loan documentation reflecting the SMLLC as a borrower.
More information about other aspects of the amendment and its effects can be found in our February 10, 2012 post about Ohio Corporate Law Changes. The text of Sub. HB 48 is available online here.
