Business Bankruptcy in Ohio: 6 Facts for Columbus and the State's Two Districts

Two numbers on North High Street in Columbus, 170 and 200, account for most of what is local about a central Ohio business bankruptcy. The first is the bankruptcy courthouse for the Southern District of Ohio's Columbus seat. The second houses the field office of the United States Trustee, whose staff will watch the case from the petition to the final decree.

Everything else is federal. A chapter 11 bankruptcy in Ohio is decided under the same Code, as one filed in Oregon. What differs is the court's own procedure, the state's exemption law for an owner who files a personal case, and the map, which in Ohio begins by cutting the state in two.

1. Ohio Is Two Districts, and Columbus Belongs to the Southern One

Under 28 U.S.C. 115, "Ohio is divided into two judicial districts to be known as the Northern and Southern Districts of Ohio." The Northern District's Eastern Division holds court at Cleveland, Youngstown, and Akron, its Western Division at Lima and Toledo. The Southern District's Western Division sits at Cincinnati and Dayton; its Eastern Division sits at Columbus, St. Clairsville, and Steubenville, and Franklin County falls within it.

The Northern District's bankruptcy court keeps offices in Akron, Canton, Cleveland, Toledo, and Youngstown. Nothing said below about the Southern District's local procedure should be assumed to hold north of the line.

Which district is proper turns on 28 U.S.C. 1408: the district where the company's domicile, residence, principal place of business, or principal assets sat for the 180 days before filing, or for the longer portion of that period. A company with its management in one city and its equipment in another may have two proper districts, and the choice between them belongs to counsel.

2. One Courthouse on High Street Serves Thirty Counties

The Columbus courthouse stands at 170 North High Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215, and the court lists thirty counties it serves, from Delaware and Licking near the capital to Belmont and Washington along the river. The district's other bankruptcy courthouses are in Cincinnati and Dayton.

A contractor in Marietta, then, files in Columbus.

So does a dental practice in Newark.

3. The Trustee Down the Street Reports to Cleveland

Region 9 of the United States Trustee Program, in the program's own words, "serves the federal judicial districts established for Michigan and Ohio," and its regional office is in Cleveland at 201 Superior Avenue East. The office that handles Columbus cases is closer to the courthouse: 200 N. High Street, Suite 309.

Under the bankruptcy rules the U.S. trustee must preside at the meeting of creditors, where the debtor's representative is examined under oath, and the office collects the quarterly fee that 28 U.S.C. 1930(a)(6) imposes on every open chapter 11 case other than one under Subchapter V. Under the schedule the program has applied since April 1, 2026, a quarter with disbursements of $62,624 or less costs $250, and the fee climbs with the money that passes through the debtor's accounts. For an owner weighing an ordinary small business case against Subchapter V, that fee is one of the few differences a bookkeeper can price before the petition is signed.

4. Ten Million Dollars Separates a Complex Case From Everything Else

The Southern District of Ohio publishes a separate track for large chapter 11 cases, and its entry test is short. According to the court's complex chapter 11 page, a case qualifies if it is filed under chapter 11, is "not filed by an individual debtor, as a single asset real estate case, or as a small business case as defined in § 101(51C)," and "the debt of the debtor or the aggregate debt of all affiliated debtors is at least $10 million or it involves a debtor with publicly traded debt or equity."

The same page imposes a courtesy with teeth: "Unless there are exigent circumstances, the debtor's attorney shall contact the United States trustee and the Clerk's Office at least two business days prior to the filing of a petition for a complex case." The call works the way a freight dispatcher's call to a loading dock in Zanesville works, placed before the truck leaves so that someone is standing at the door with a pallet jack when it arrives.

The exclusion list repays a slow reading. The rule excludes a small business case as section 101(51C) defines it, and that definition covers a small business debtor that has not elected Subchapter V. A Subchapter V case is not named at all. It does not need to be, because Subchapter V is open only to a small business debtor, and a small business debtor's aggregate noncontingent liquidated debts cannot exceed $3,424,000, the figure in force since April 1, 2025 (a bill to restore a $7.5 million ceiling was moving through Congress in 2026, and neither number approaches ten million). The two thresholds never meet.

Consider, as a hypothetical, a Grove City distributor carrying $11 million in bank debt, equipment leases, and four merchant cash advances stacked over eighteen months, whose owner learns on a Thursday that the senior lender will sweep the operating account on Monday and whose lawyer must decide by Friday whether the case will open under the complex procedures, which require that telephone call two business days before the filing, or whether some exigent circumstance excuses the call, a judgment that will be made in an office on a deadline with an incomplete set of loan documents on the desk.

That distributor's case is complex by the rule's own arithmetic. The company one size down, with $2 million in debt and the same stack of advances, is not. Its first days in court are governed by the general local rules and the Code, and the choice it faces is the one priced in the trustee's fee schedule above: an ordinary small business case or Subchapter V.

5. Mediation Is Offered, Confidential, and Optional

The Southern District runs a voluntary mediation program. The court keeps a roster of mediators, allows the parties to choose someone off the roster with the court's approval, and states that "The mediation is completely confidential." A separate program handles mortgage modification.

For a debtor whose largest dispute is with a merchant cash advance funder over whether its contract was a sale or a loan, a confidential room with a neutral in it is sometimes worth more than a ruling, which will be public and may be appealed. Nothing obliges the funder to enter the room.

6. Ohio Opted Out, and the House Is Worth $182,625 to Its Owner

Exemptions protect individuals, not companies. An LLC in chapter 11 has no homestead. The owner who signed a personal guaranty on the advance, the equipment note, or the SBA loan may one day file a case of her own, and in that case Ohio law decides what she keeps.

Ohio has opted out of the federal list. Ohio Revised Code 2329.662 states that "this state specifically does not authorize debtors who are domiciled in this state to exempt the property specified in" 11 U.S.C. 522(d). Its homestead provision, R.C. 2329.66(A)(1)(b), sets a statutory base of one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars in "one parcel or item of real or personal property that the person or a dependent of the person uses as a residence," and that base is adjusted every third April 1 by the Ohio Judicial Conference.

On April 1, 2025, the adjusted figure became $182,625, where it will remain through March 31, 2028, according to a notice the Southern District's bankruptcy court posted that March; it had been $161,375. The same notice set the exemption for one motor vehicle at $5,025. The figure is per debtor, and a married couple should not assume it doubles without asking counsel.

Ohio does not appear on the March 2026 list of ten states with commercial financing disclosure statutes compiled by the law firm Venable LLP, and the research behind this page found no Ohio statute of that kind.

The Case That Never Reaches High Street

Some Ohio businesses belong in that courthouse. A company facing a sweep of its operating account by Monday, a receiver motion, or a secured lender's sale needs Ohio bankruptcy counsel.

Others carry debt that can still be negotiated outside a court. Delancey Street works outside the courtroom: it is a debt settlement company, not a law firm, and it does not file bankruptcy cases or give legal advice. It will look over a company's funder contracts, bank activity, and liens at no charge and in confidence, and it brings in outside attorneys, independently licensed, once a legal question arises. An owner who hears what a restructuring outside court would look like, before the petition is drafted, chooses between two paths with both of them in view.

The geography of Ohio's courts is fixed by statute, and the homestead figure is fixed until 2028, while the terms a funder will accept are not fixed by anything, which is the one variable in this list an owner can still move.