Company bankrupt, going after employees???

[tosvus]

Hi,

My wife and I live in Illinois. She used to work for a company that went into bankruptcy court (about 2 years back). She worked there for a couple of more months before she quit.

Today we got a letter from the Director and proposed Liquidating trustee of the company, demanding she pay them a pretty large sum of money, within 15 days. There is no mentioning of exactly what this money is supposedly owed due to, other than it "has been determined to be preferential transfers in the last 90 days before they commenced the Bankruptcy Case in the Florida Bankruptcy court". (Their HQ was/is in Florida).

My wife is a sales person, so we don't know if this is perhaps commission money or expenses she was reimbursed in that period.

They furthermore state that if we believe this to be wrong, we have to prove why we should not pay it. Kind of hard when we have no idea how they came up with the amount!?

They say if no response is given in 15 days from the date of the letter, they will pursue "any and all remedies available to it, including initiation of litigation in the Florida Bankruptcy court to recover the amount plus maximum interest and other costs".

My questions:
a) Can they do this? Especially with no information as to how this amount was determined????

b) If we refuse to pay, obviously understanding the risk of bad credit scores, is there anything else we have to worry about? Do we have to meet in Court? Can they take it out of her current paycheck?

Again, we live in IL and this is where she was employed, but their HQ and bankruptcy case is in FL.

Your advice would be greatly appreciated!

[bigun]

You better contact someone within those 15 days and find out what's going on because, they sure can sue her for the return of the funds.

[tosvus]

Thanks, though I now realize that any advice will probably depend on the amount of money involved. While we find 1200 to be considerable, getting a lawyer, I imagine, would quickly exceed this amount. On the flipside, anyone know how likely it is that a company would drag someone to court over 1200?

Thanks again for further feedback.