Kansas Court Broadens Charging Order Against Single-Member LLC
Judgment creditors of LLC members usually have the right under state law to obtain a charging order against a member’s LLC interest. A charging order mandates that any distributions by the LLC that would otherwise be made to the member be paid instead to the creditor. The charging order provides no benefit, though, if no distributions are made to the LLC’s members. And if the judgment debtor is the only member of the LLC, it’s unlikely that he or she will cause the LLC to make distributions, since those would have to go to the creditor.
The U.S. District Court in Kansas recently had to determine the scope of a charging order against a single-member LLC in Meyer v. Christie, No. 07-2230-CM, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 118590 (D. Kan. Oct. 13, 2011). Although the Kansas LLC Act says a charging order against an LLC member’s interest is the creditor’s exclusive remedy, the court surprisingly found that, in the case of a single-member LLC, the creditor could assert management rights and take control of the LLC.
The relevant facts are straightforward. The plaintiffs obtained a final judgment of about $7 million against the defendants, who had interests in several Kansas LLCs. The plaintiffs asked the judge to issue a charging order against the defendants’ interests in the LLCs, under the authority of Kansas’s LLC Act:
Rights of judgment creditor. On application to a court of competent jurisdiction by any judgment creditor of a member, the court may charge the limited liability company interest of the member with payment of the unsatisfied amount of the judgment with interest. To the extent so charged, the judgment creditor has only the rights of an assignee of the limited liability company interest. This act does not deprive any member of the benefit of any exemption laws applicable to the member’s limited liability company interest. The rights provided by this section to the judgment creditor shall be the sole and exclusive remedy of a judgment creditor with respect to the member’s limited liability company interest.
Kan. Stat. Ann. § 17-76,113 (emphasis added).
A charging order is a limited remedy – the creditor has only the rights of an assignee, i.e., the economic right to receive distributions, and no rights to participate in management. The Kansas statute also provides that the charging order is the exclusive remedy, so the creditor cannot attach or foreclose on the member’s interest and thereby take control. (The charging order provisions of some state LLC Acts are silent on whether the charging order is a creditor’s exclusive remedy. See my discussion of Florida’s Olmstead v. FTC case on charging orders, here.)
The court acknowledged the Kansas LLC Act’s clear statement that the charging order is the only remedy by which a member’s judgment creditor can reach the member’s LLC interest, and discussed the partnership law origins of the LLC charging order. In the case of partnerships, a creditor’s charging order against a partner will not entitle the creditor to participate in the management of the partnership. Meyer, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 118590, at *10.
But, said the court, the result is different in the case of an LLC with only one member. That’s because of a specific provision in the Kansas LLC Act:
If the assignor of a limited liability company interest is the only member of the limited liability company at the time of the assignment, the assignee shall have the right to participate in the management of the business and affairs of the limited liability company as a member.
Kan. Stat. Ann. § 17-76,112(f). That paragraph is not in the Act’s section on charging orders, but is part of a long section dealing with assignments of LLC interests.
Without discussion, the court simply assumed that the holder of a charging order not only has the rights of an assignee but actually is an assignee. The court then held that under Section § 17-76,112(f), “the assignee/creditor shall have the right to participate in the management of the business and affairs of the LLC as a member.” Meyer, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 118590, at *11. With those rights, the holder of a charging order against an LLC’s sole member can take over the LLC, make distributions to itself, and liquidate the LLC if it so chooses.
The problem with the court’s holding is that the creditor’s rights under a charging order are limited to satisfaction of the debt. Once the judgment debtor’s obligation is satisfied, the charging order is extinguished. An assignment, in contrast, is a permanent transfer of the property rights assigned. The charging order statute accordingly recognizes that the rights of the creditor are limited: “To the extent so charged, the judgment creditor has only the rights of an assignee of the limited liability company interest.” Kan. Stat. Ann. § 17-76,113 (emphasis added). The Meyer court ignored the inherent limitations of charging orders. Its confusion between the limited economic rights granted under a charging order and the full transfer of rights granted under a true assignment led it to the wrong result.
Some states have added provisions to their LLC Acts to clarify this point and avoid a Meyer result. Thomas Rutledge recently blogged about the Meyer case, here, and pointed out that Kentucky has amended its LLC Act to provide that “[a] charging order does not of itself constitute an assignment of the [LLC] interest.” Ky. Rev. Stat. § 275.260(3).
Michigan similarly provides in its LLC Act that a charging order is not an assignment of the member’s interest, and that the holder of a charging order does not become a member of the LLC. Mich. Comp. Laws § 450.4507.
One recent publication that is a useful reference for investigating state LLC charging order laws is Carter G. Bishop, Fifty State Series: LLC Charging Order Statutes , Suffolk University Law School Research Paper No. 10-03 (Oct. 6, 2011) .
